


Way Down Hadestown

by yourcrookedheart



Category: The Magicians (TV)
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Bisexuality, Canonical Character Death, Ethical Dilemmas, Fix-It, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Multi, POV Alternating, Post-Season/Series 04, Resurrection
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-22
Updated: 2019-09-06
Packaged: 2020-07-11 12:15:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 12
Words: 40,994
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19927927
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yourcrookedheart/pseuds/yourcrookedheart
Summary: A simple rule of the Universe: once someone has died, you must never attempt to bring them back.Mustnot. Notcannot.The existence of the principle implies the possibility; there’d be no need to create rules for an impossible thing.Quentin Coldwater steps through a door, and thus ends his story. But the story for the others is only beginning, and Alice and Eliot aren’t about to take it lying down.Or: the road to hell turns out to be paved with good intentions, soul-searching, and maybe a sacrifice or two.





	1. New York

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, here it is. My own requisite fix-it fic. At this point everyone and their psychotic sloth girlfriend has written one, but I still wanted to try my hand at taking on the finale and coming to terms with it. As such, and as this fic deals with the fallout of s4, it contains explicit references to death, suicide and mental illness. I’ve tried to tag most things that could upset people, but at the same time I’d also like to keep a little mystery as to where this fic is going. I urge you all to take care and not venture any further if you think this will trigger you. If you’d like a heads up or more info about the content, hit me up on Tumblr and I can answer your specific questions.
> 
> A short note on the relationships tags—this story includes references to and interactions between both Quentin/Eliot and Quentin/Alice, but it’s not so much a shippy fic as it is an exploration of all the different dynamics, the primary one being Eliot and Alice. If that’s not your jam, please feel free to skip, because I don’t want to mislead people looking for a straight-forward romance!
> 
> Finally, eternal gratitude to ExistentialMalaises for all services provided—both the emotional support and proofreading the entire thing. Couldn't do it without you, truly.
> 
> Now that that’s all out of the way, buckle up everyone. It's a ride.

“The living tell the dying not to leave, and the dying do not listen. The dying tell us not to be sad for them, and we do not listen. The dialogue between the living and the dead is full of misunderstanding and silence.”

— Welcome to Night Vale, Episode 37 “The Auction”

  
The winter Quentin dies is New York’s coldest winter in four decades. Fitting, Alice thinks, as she ducks her head to hide her nose into the soft wool of her scarf, wind whipping the skin left exposed. She’s never been fond of winter, honestly. Sometimes it feels as if she simply traded the polar blasts of Chicago for a different type of cold—one no scarf, no matter how thick, will protect her from.

Perhaps she could look into portable heating spells. There used to be a book at the Brakebills library—Livingstone and Suárez, maybe Blažek?—that covered the topic. Tonight, if she has time after work, she’ll ask Penny for a quick trip to the alma mater, which Fogg asserted would always remain open to all alumni, no matter how much of a pain in the ass they might have been. Brakebills’ few dozen shelves may be a small pond compared to the ocean that is the Library, but Alice misses curling up in one of the massive leather armchairs, feet tucked beneath her and a heavy book weighing down her lap. That, or taking notes at the mahogany tables, Quentin across from her as he spent more time staring at her than at his own book—

Quentin.

The chill that travels down her spine has nothing to do with the weather.

Three weeks, five days, countless hours. The countdown is intimately familiar from the recent loss of her father, but the grief that seemed to swallow her whole the first nights after finding him on the floor faded eventually. Slowly, painfully, feet dragging on the floor in a lethargic tread—but it did fade. None of this feels like it will fade.

Routine keeps her afloat. Today like most days she gets a morning coffee at the hipster-run shop on the corner, which serves a variety of elaborate orders in eco-friendly cups—something hot and sugary for her and a black espresso for Kady. When she gets back to the apartment, Kady will be up already, checking the news on her phone and inhaling one of the croissants Penny gets from a small bakery in Paris. They’ll eat together in silence for the most part, because until three weeks and twenty days ago, Julia was usually the only one chipper enough to carry a conversation before nine and she’s prone to quiet mornings now too, for—obvious reasons.

And so, trying her best to keep her mind on the heating spell, Alice sips her coffee and waits for Kady to finish her pastry.

*

“You got the report on Bethesda?” Kady asks about an hour after Penny has dropped them off at their office. Black lace-up boots on her desk, flipping through a file. Zelda would have an aneurysm if she were around to see it. “We’re gonna have to pay them a visit. I mean—I guess we could have Pete do it. It’ll make him feel important. What do you think?”

Alice hums an affirmative. She read the Bethesda report yesterday at midnight, when she wasn’t willing to submit to sleep just yet. She doesn’t mind working overtime these days as long as it keeps her occupied, but also—it was midnight, and the details are hazy in the morning. More old-guard Librarians resisting the new generation, in which case sending Pete might not be the smartest idea.

Mostly, though, Alice’s mind is on the letter on her desk, stamped return to sender. The sixth in a little less than a month, which means they’ve long since moved past ‘coincidence’, if such a thing even exists in their world. Neat black print mars the back of the sealed envelope. She runs her nails along the flap, peeling it back, and says, “Have you ever tried to contact Penny?”

In her periphery, Kady freezes, right as Alice realizes what she’s said. She looks up to find Kady’s face drawn tight, and guilt washes over Alice, especially when Kady’s voice comes out low and level. “What?”

“It—it’s this message I sent,” Alice says. “To the Underworld branch. I wanted to set up a meeting to discuss the future of the Library, but they keep sending the notes back with no reply.”

She should have apologized, she knows—the clench of Kady’s jaw tells her that much. She’s been trying so hard, too. “No, I haven’t,” Kady says. “If Penny wanted to see me, he would have.”

“Right, but don’t you think—”

“ _What_ , Alice. What do I think.” It’s not a question, not the way Kady says it.

It’s not as if Alice has become best friends with Kady all of a sudden. They share breakfast every morning and dinner most evenings, and Alice knows her exact coffee order, and they spend their entire working day together to head home to the same apartment after. But from what Alice knows of friendship—from her mother and Carol, Kady and Julia, Eliot and Margo, she and Quentin—it involves a significant amount more talking about your feelings than she and Kady ever do.

And still she’s the closest thing Alice has to a friend. How sad is that, especially since Alice is evidently the one who is messing things up?

“I’m sorry,” she says, trying to imbue the words with as much genuine emotion as she can, which isn’t all that hard seeing as the guilt has yes to dissipate. “I wasn’t thinking.”

Kady’s eye-roll could mean either forgiveness or indifference, or knowing her, some combination of the two. “It’s fine. What’s with the letter?”

“Right, so.” This, at least, is Alice in her element. A little over three weeks ago, when Zelda offered her the chance to hold an executive position now that Everett’s branch had effectively found itself without leadership, she more or less jumped at the opportunity. It wasn’t a difficult choice at all. The bedroom she’d retired to after Eliot’s return—Quentin’s bedroom—which had at first provided a measure of comfort, had soon become unbearable torturous, and she’s done enough self-flagellation in her life. Anything to get her out of bed, wrapped in one of his ubiquitous sweaters which she’d so often made fun of once upon a time. If that includes reforming a formerly fascist organization into a community-focused non-profit, then all the better. At least something good will come of her avoidance coping.

“We’ve been focusing our attentions on Earth and the Neitherlands,” Alice explains, “but there’s a whole branch of the Library that’s located in the Underworld according to Zelda. I thought they’d try to contact us themselves, especially after Everett’s death, but it’s been almost a month of radio silence. And every letter I send either goes missing or—”

“Return to sender.” Kady is paying attention now, lowering her feet to the floor and shifting through the files on her desk. “Shit, you’re right. So… what? They’re hiding something from us?”

“I don’t know. But it has to mean something, right?”

There’s a small voice in Alice’s head that says this is just another pointless quest, a mystery she’s only throwing herself into to keep her mind from straying to memories and thoughts that could destroy her if she doesn’t manage to compartmentalize. But then there’s Kady’s invigorating energy as she purses her lips and leans forward on her elbows, bridging the gap between their desks. “I’ll go talk to Zelda. Where else do we find information on the Underworld?”

“Well, we’re in a library.” She shrugs. “That seems like a good place to start.”

*

A few hours later, Alice is forced to question her own words. Even the Poison Room, the decontamination of which was carried out as one of the first orders of business under Kady and Zelda’s watchful eye, seems to have been scrubbed of all information on the Underworld. It’s suitably ironic that all books on the subject can probably only be found in the Underworld branch itself. So much for transparency of information.

Alice accosts a clueless and harried clerk, who sends her down another identical hallway in a clear effort to get rid of her so he can continue his job. Good to know customer service is still as terrible as when she was trying to regain her niffin knowledge. Even with a map, it’s always seemed nearly impossible to Alice to make sense of the maze of rows and shelves, and the classification system is nothing as straight-forward as the Dewey Decimal. Why make it easy, after all?

Dust particles creep into her nose and make her cough, catching the little light there is as she drags her hand across the shelves. It’s dark enough that she eventually has to use magic to guide her way. She remembers how as a child, she and Charlie used to practice the spell by chanting _Lumos_ over and over, even after they were far too old to need any kind of game or mnemonic to study. Now she simply executes the movement, creating a soft yellow beacon that feels entirely out of place in the drab gray of the Library and which reminds her of Pete’s grumbling about adding a few plants to liven up the place.

Standing on her tiptoes, she scans the top shelf, marked by a ‘Generalia and Phenomena — Z.2.756 R’ label. _A History of Windmills: Displacements and Mysterious Disappearances. Theories on the Multiverse. Cultural Conversations on Telekinesis. A Guidebook to Ethical Necromancy—_

Almost too quickly for her eyes to register, the book is gone. In its stead has appeared a copy of _Astral Projecting for Beginners_ , dog-eared and just as dust-covered as everything else, as if it’s always been there. But she knows what she saw. This isn’t like the dreams she’ll wake up from some nights, thinking she’ll find Quentin’s face inches from hers, his legs tangled between hers. This isn’t her stupid, hopeful mind betraying her.

The book was there, and now it isn’t. The Underworld isn’t returning her missives. And Alice Quinn never encountered a mystery she wouldn’t solve.

She desperately tries to ignore the title of the missing book as she hunts down Kady and Sheila, but the urgency behind her actions betrays her true intent. Necromancy. Most of the knowledge she gained as a niffin is still lost to her, but she remembers a few core principles, one of which is a simple rule of the Universe: once someone has died, you must never attempt to bring them back.

_Must_ not. Not _cannot_. The existence of the principle implies the possibility; there’d be no need to create rules for an impossible thing.

Even without mentioning any of this to Kady or Sheila, Kady still observes her a little too long anyway when she explains what happened. Her eyes are narrowed to dark slits.

“Can you find it?” Alice asks Sheila, who is sitting at her desk and mournfully staring at her full mug of tea and half-eaten pastry. Well, there’ll be time for tea breaks later.

Sheila drops her pastry to the plate with a sigh. “I’ll try, but I can’t make any promises.”

“That’s good enough. It was dark blue, maybe gray?” Alice describes the book in as much detail as she can remember from the split second she was able to see it. A silent observer, Kady sits on Sheila’s desk and only occasionally tries to catch Alice’s gaze with a meaningful look, like they’ve established some kind of language where they no longer need words to communicate—which they haven’t. Alice ignores her.

After noting down Alice’s description, Sheila gets up from the desk and motions for Alice to join her. “That’ll do, I think. Again, no promises.” Now she too leaves a pregnant pause, searching Alice’s face.

Alice tries not to let her impatience show. “I understand.”

Sheila nods once, decisively, then closes her eyes. Quaeromancy isn’t a discipline Alice has a lot of knowledge of, though she did her research after meeting Sheila that first time in Modesto. It’s barely even taught at Brakebills, and unlike Alice’s own phosphoromancy or telekinesis, it’s not very flashy. Useful for finding your keys, not a very good party trick—that was the officious Brakebills review. But as Sheila leads them through the Library, down hallways even Alice has never been in, she remembers what she’d told Quentin about his discipline: that there is tremendous power in the mundane, in that which most people overlook or outright dismiss. It’s the type of magic you can feel in the air, that wraps itself around you like a soft summer breeze.

Alice takes a breath, blows it out through her clenched teeth and blinks away the tears before they can spill over onto her cheeks.

“Hold on,” Sheila says, pausing in her tracks in front of a wall. It’s a plain, gray surface like everything else, with no effort having been made at decorating, but when she extends her hand as if to press her palm against it, she moves right through.

Sheila pulls her hand back, shaking it lightly. “Careful,” she cautions right as Kady disappears, Alice following behind.

It’s as if they’ve left the Library and stepped out into another world, with lush grass that tickles Alice’s ankles and forests that stretch out in front of them, towards far-off mountains bracketed by a clear blue sky. It might have been Fillory, or any other magical world that appears just a little too good to be true. A little red bird hops past Alice’s feet and with great relish pulls a worm from the ground.

“Where are we?” Kady asks. She fans her hand in front of her face, swatting at the fluffy pollen that litter the air. Fillory has those too, Alice realizes, but she’s never heard of a portal located at the Library.

“Over here.” Sheila brushes Alice’s shoulder with her hand and motions them towards the border of the forest. There, a little beyond the first line of trees, suspended in a pool of bright light that seems to have no detectable origin, hangs the book.

Kady steps forward without crossing over onto the mossy forest floor. “That was easy. So do we just—grab it?”

They observe the illuminated book in silence for a while. It can’t be that easy. Whoever sent Alice on this merry chase must have motive for it. But then, isn’t this how she found the Binder in the Mirror Realm? Sometimes, books want to be found and there’s nothing sinister about it at all. She raises her hands to detect any spellwork, telltale signs of wards that will keep them from approaching, but comes up empty. “I don’t think it’s warded,” she says, not entirely willing to believe it herself.

“Okay, I’m just gonna—” And then Kady closes the rest of the distance and snags the book out of the air. For a few seconds, they collectively hold their breath and wait for something to explode.

Nothing happens.

Kady raises an eyebrow. “Yeah, that’s not suspicious.”

“Can I see?” Alice asks. Kady hands the book over gamely and steps aside to check the doorway through which they came, to see if the portal works both ways. It does. The Library hallway seems every grayer on return, all unbridled nature and color replaced by a chilled drabness. When Sheila raps her knuckles against the wall, her hand no longer passes through.

Alice cracks open the book. In neat handwriting, a message is inscribed on the opening page, the ink dark against the white page. _Use wisely._ Sheila leans over, carefully as if the book might attack at any moment, and before Alice has time to warn her off the letters bleed out into the page, leaving nothing but a smudge, as if whoever wrote the message had meant it to be for her eyes only.

“Stop me if I’m wrong,” Sheila says, her penciled brows drawn together, “but necromancy isn’t actually a good thing, right? They don’t teach that at that fancy school of yours as an elective?”

The book feels deceptively small in Alice’s hands, but the power coming off of it is radiant enough that even a non-magic user could probably identify its value. This, she realizes, is the kind of information the Library used to keep in the operating Poison Room, sacred knowledge Librarians have died to keep out of the hands of mere mortals. The niffin that’s dug its way deep inside her memory vibrates at the thought, while Alice herself frowns in trepidation. It’s the nauseating thrill of a note in the margins that will lead her to a fountain and her brother going up in ice-blue flames in front of her eyes.

Then, too, the quickened beat of her heart in her throat.

Hope.


	2. The Dark King

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Previous chapter: A few weeks after Quentin's death, Alice is settling into her new role with the Library. But just as she realizes something may be up with the Underworld, a regular day at the office leads to a merry chase to discover a book with a startingly apt subject; ethical necromancy.
> 
> This chapter: Eliot and Margo explore Fillory-future.

The opium-laced air in Fillory feels like a shot of adrenaline straight into Eliot’s veins, sparking up every nerve of the body he returned to after a sojourn in the Monster’s mind palace—a body suffering from withdrawal. It’s not a feeling Eliot is intimately familiar with but for a few ill-advised attempts at sobriety during his first year at Brakebills, but it’s still uncomfortable enough that he can recognize it for what it is. Courtesy of Quentin, as Julia explained, who risked his life to force a god-level supervillain to take better care of Eliot’s body than Eliot himself ever had.

It takes him a little under four weeks and one visit to Fillory-future to ruin that too.

Nearly four weeks, and Margo still looks at him like if she takes her eyes off of him for five seconds he’ll disappear to find the nearest castle and throw himself off its highest turret. It’s why they’re in Fillory in the first place, he suspects. Fillory saved him once, why fix a coping mechanism if it ain’t broke? Same story, different dead guy. The opium helps more than Fillory does, but it might be smarter not to tell her that.

They have to rest more often than either of them would like to, because while the cane certainly adds an air of gravitas to Eliot’s look, a slow-healing stomach wound is inconvenient when hiking through the Fillorian woods. He’s seen more of the country and locals the past few days than he ever did when he was still High King, which is how he finds out that even centuries into the future the people are still fertilizing. It seems to be the legacy of his brief reign. He’ll count it as a win.

Along the way they find refuge in taverns. Today’s lodging is a quaint little inn named ‘The Night’s Watch’, where a bored barmaid ushers them towards a table in the corner and serves them something that at some point must’ve merited the name goulash and which Eliot takes one whiff of, after which he gingerly puts down his spoon, watching Margo poke at the thick muck instead.

“This is an insult to Josh’ legacy,” she says, taking a bite with all the enthusiasm of a food taster at the Borgia palace. She finds a new thing to complain about every day of their trip—from the food to the mattress to the coat she decided to bring herself. They pale in light of what Eliot’s managed to gather of her desert quest from her and Julia, which means the laments are for his benefit. A return to the people they’d been once upon a time, royals of a small magic college in New York, years before they’d both lose their crowns in more ways than one.

 _Can’t you see there’s no going back_ , he’d tell Margo, if he didn’t think it would lead to a conversation about their feelings. Neither of them are any good at that. 

She finishes her goulash, talking strategy between bites. “How about we just walk right back into the castle and hang this Dark King off the balcony by his balls?” she suggests, not for the first time. “Or her balls. Though overthrowing a female High King sure sounds like something a man would do.”

He humors her with a smile. “I think this will require a bit more finesse than the usual guns-blazing approach. We’ll get you your throne back in no time, Bambi.”

“Yeah, yeah. My throne and my man, and your wife. Ex-wife?” She makes a confused face. “I’m even starting to miss that damn sloth. Exile doesn’t suit me.” There’s a very real hurt beneath the usual wisecracks, and Eliot is reminded of everything that was sacrificed in the fight against the Monster. For him. _Because_ of him. Before his thoughts can go down that path, though, Margo steamrollers ahead with her usual finesse. “Do you think they’ve got crème brulée here? God I miss Earth food. Four days and I’m craving a goddamn croissant.” She pushes her plate to the side and rests her elbows on the table. “I say we find Jane, grab that stupid key of hers and fix this whole clusterfuck.”

Eliot pretends to consider it. “You mean killing Jane Chatwin.”

“Okay, first of all, technically that’s our key. Yours, whatever.” She breezes past this like it’s nothing. “Second, so the fuck what? She’s from the forties, she’s had a good run.”

They’ve known each other long enough that most of the time they can communicate without words, and she interprets his silence correctly. She waves her hand around. “Fine, no killing Jane. But I want this dickbag off my throne asap.”

“Excuse me.”

At the table next to them, a young woman is staring at them with wide eyes. With her round cheeks and short hair she looks almost pixie-ish, which is not impossible for Fillory, but she’s wearing a kind of pewter-gray armor that offsets any daintiness she might otherwise possess.

She leans out of her seat, across the space between their tables. “High King Margo. It is you, isn’t it?” Her voice is full of awe, eyes still round like she can’t believe what she’s seeing. “You’re—you were banned centuries ago. Presumed dead.”

Margo preens, infinitely pleased at being recognized, and extends her hand for the woman to shake. “Well, a monarch never abandons her realm.”

“Former High King Eliot,” Eliot says. The look he gets is decidedly less impressed. Charming. “And who might you be?”

“I’m Lyra.” She doesn’t bother to expand on that as instead she says, “I apologize, I thought I overheard you discussing the Dark King. Have you by any chance returned to overtake the throne?” The lightness of her tone is almost comical, as if she may as well be talking about the fortuitous weather Fillory has been blessed with recently.

Eliot shares a look with Margo. “Is that an option?” Margo asks.

Lyra’s laughter is sudden and shockingly loud even in the noise of the inn. “We’ve been waiting for a child of Earth to return for three hundred years to do exactly that. I can introduce you to some people.” She shakes her head, still incredulous. “High King Margo, in the flesh. Me and my sisters grew up on stories of your reign, you know. It was always a fight over who would get to be you during games.” She glances around the inn, and Eliot knows what she’s about to say, though that doesn’t stop the words from hitting him with the force of a Magic Missile. “Are Queen Alice and King Quentin not with you?”

“It’s just us,” Margo says quickly. Too quickly it seems, because Lyra tilts her head in silent inquiry as Margo continues, “Do you think we could keep the revolution for tomorrow? It’s been a long day.”

It’s clear Lyra is one of those people who remains endlessly enthusiastic even in the face of a clear dismissal. She looks familiar, though Eliot can’t place it. Something about her smile and the sparkle in her eyes. That Fillory optimism which always made the world seem more foreign than even the talking animals or sentient forests did.

They agree to meet at the same table the next morning. Lyra’s laughter rings behind them as they leave her in the tavern to make their way up the stairs to their room, sparsely furnished but cleaner than last night’s, which is about all Eliot has space to care about at the moment. Margo for her part complains about the lumpy mattress for five minutes after they’ve turned off the light and then promptly falls asleep, leaving Eliot to stare up at the ceiling in the dark. She’s right—the mattress is lumpy, but it isn’t the mattress that keeps him up.

Insomnia isn’t the worst of his problems, it only acerbates the others; the searing aches that ebb and crest like waves, the merry-go-round of his thoughts and the bone-deep exhaustion that isn’t just a result of the lack of sleep. There’s enough light from the lanterns outside that he can see the cracks in the wooden beams that spread out like spiderwebs, dark fissures he imagines hide all kinds of secrets. He counts them, recites the Fillorian metric system in his head which Rafe meticulously explained once, and tries not to think. Never think—that way lies torment. He’s done this once before, he can do it again, this time without sending himself and his friends into an early grave. Fillory is here with another impossible problem to be solved, and he can move on.

Except he isn’t sure he wants to.

Unlike Julia or Alice, he’s not the research type—never has been—but there’s one plan he knows would work. One that would get him where he needs to be, the one shortcut that doesn’t require any research or even intricate spellwork.

Margo continues to snore softly beside him, and he’s grateful for the puffs of hot breath against his neck as well as the weight of her arm across his chest, so much softer than the coarsely thin blanket. She’s been through hell and back for him. He’ll never be able to repay her for it, but leaving her would be the worst type of reward for her efforts. Even someone as selfish as him knows that much.

A creaking noise sneaks upon the quiet room as a ray of light falls across the bed from the open door. That split second is all Eliot has to roll over, a knife plunging into the mattress where he’d been laying.

Margo wakes up with a shout, and then chaos erupts.

Hands drag him back, onto the floor, his elbow banging against the bed frame. He hears Margo yelling, the light of a spell followed by glass breaking. The window. Someone’s sailing through the air, up against the ceiling and crashing onto the floor next to him.

“Eliot, Jesus _fuck_.” Margo’s face hovers above when he sees the shadow of a man appearing behind her. He pulls her back. It’s another knife-wielder, this one more determined than the last.

The room remains cast in shadows, but there’s enough light to identify the gray armor.

“What the fuck,” Eliot says, his voice catching on the last word as he manages to drag Margo through the door, down the stairs. He misses a couple of steps, the wound on his stomach burning fiercely, and then they’re stumbling out into the night air, without even looking behind them to see how many assailants have followed them. The dark of the trees is the only viable escape route, which means Margo has to carry him forward every time he falters.

Long, long minutes after his lungs have given out his knees decide to withdraw as well. He buckles onto the wet, mossy forest ground with a sigh of relief.

“Stay here, you fucker. I am your _fucking_ monarch, I will have you decapitated—” It takes Eliot a second to realize Margo’s not talking to him but to the rabbit she finally manages to grab, its little white paws thrashing in the air. “Get us out,” she yells, as the bunny disappears and she collapses next to Eliot. She clutches her heaving chest, sweat trickling down her forehead.

To his credit, Twenty-Three shows up not even a minute later and whisks them away before the voices of their foes can get any closer. He deposits them in the middle of the apartment. Not at all affected by their wide-eyed panic and with a frown that fits more with the Penny of old, he says, “What the fuck did you guys do this time?”

Every breath sends a new wave of fire through Eliot’s body. The couch seems slightly more appealing than collapsing onto the ground again in front of everyone, so he staggers forward and sinks down. There’s a tear in his sleeve that has blood sticking to it, and he’s pretty sure he twisted his ankle at some point. Margo seems too keyed-up to sit down, vibrating with energy as she is. The scratches along her bare skin stand out against the white of her nightdress. They must look as if they’ve been attacked by a bear, and not the fun, amicable Humbledrum kind.

“Those motherfuckers tried to kill us,” she says, outraged. “That backwater, shithole country. See if I try to save them again.”

At the kitchen counter, Julia, Kady and Alice are all gathered, staring at the scene in front of them. For a moment Eliot wonders what they’d been discussing before the disruption, because he doubts Julia’s frayed, pale look is due to her worry about their wellbeing, but then Kady gets up to pour some leftover coffee into two extra mugs. It’s instant, maybe Folgers, and just this side of lukewarm. Margo makes a face.

“I’m sure it’s—an interesting story,” Alice says. “But we’ve got some news here too.”

“Oh god.” Margo sighs deeply and deposits her full mug on the coffee table. “Don’t tell me. A possessed unicorn showed up and now there’s no magic except for the Vegas kind.”

No one even so much as cracks a smile. For as long as Eliot’s known her, Alice has always been a little too serious, always so committed to whatever she set her mind to that day. But whatever she’s found now has shaken her—and not just her. Penny hovers near, watchful and waiting. It’s bad news, then, but when is it not? “Margo,” Eliot says.

“Thanks,” Alice says, a little surprised. “So, I was at the Library with Kady—” She glances at Kady as if looking for reinforcement, and Kady nods. “Since we started restructuring, I’ve been trying to contact the Underworld to, you know, set up a meeting. But they haven’t been answering my messages, for nearly a month now, so I—we—decided to look into it.” _We_ including Kady, who’s taking a note out of Penny’s book and tensing her shoulders as if readying for a fight.

Alice’s nervous energy is almost—Eliot doesn’t want to think it, but—Quentin-like. She keeps fidgeting with her hair, wearing a small circle into the floor. The only thing missing is gratuitous references to Fillory.

“Get to the point already,” Margo says.

“Fine,” Alice snaps, pressing her lips together and exhaling a sharp breath through her nose. Steeling herself. “I think there’s a way we can get him back.” She pauses and swallows. “Quentin, I mean. We can get Quentin back.” She says it as if she’s convincing herself too, voice growing stronger as she repeats her words.

Her eyes are wide. She keeps them fixed on Eliot, sucking in quick little breaths as if she’s been running. If Eliot were still standing, he’s sure his legs would have given out now. He wants to say something, anything, but the words won’t come, and he’s afraid if he makes any attempt at speaking he’ll burst out in laughter instead, the hysterical kind that will finally confirm he’s losing his goddamn mind.

Then Margo, forever dependable, says the only thing that can be said, the words that won’t make it past Eliot’s clenched throat.

“Well, fuck me. How?”


	3. Ethical Necromancy

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Previous chapter: Eliot and Margo are in Fillory, looking for a way to defeat the Dark King. After they just barely escape an assassination attempt, they return to Earth to the shocking news that Alice may have found a way to save Quentin.
> 
> This chapter: Alice, Eliot and Margo do research.

Things are never as easy as they first appear. Lucky for Alice, she’s learned to manage her expectations, so when whoever is responsible for leading her to the book in the Library seems to have packed up their things and left them to it, she’s not surprised. It’s just another mystery for her to solve. Another quest, another game they’ll suspend their daily lives for. If she ignores what hangs in the balance this time, it almost seems manageable.

“Isn’t that how you found the Binder too?” Julia says. She’s been quiet, sitting cross-legged at the kitchen counter with her hands in her lap like she’s trying to channel her inner yoga goddess. “It just seems… I don’t know.”

“Shady,” Kady suggests.

Julia shrugs, gaze trained on her hands. “I was going to say ‘convenient’.”

“Let me get this straight—we have a book that explicitly confirms it’s possible to bring people back from the dead, along with notes on how to do it. And we’re not doing it because—why the fuck aren’t we doing it? Because we don’t know where the book came from?” Smoke from Eliot’s cigarette curls up into the air to disappear into the kitchen hood, the compromise they—not Alice, probably Kady—arrived at for an apartment that houses more than one chain smoker. He’s leaning on the counter, pale and thin like an elegant ghost and only barely managing to make his position look artful rather than a necessity, but he’s unshakable in his resolve. His frustration is palpable, and Alice feels a spark of kinship she’d never thought she’d feel with Eliot Waugh of all people.

“We should look into it, at least,” she says, trying to appeal to Julia, who now gazes out the window behind them.

Penny looks at her, then back at Alice, then Eliot, like he’s following a particularly intriguing game of tennis. “Nothing wrong with looking into it.”

Julia turns to stare at him, with that minuscule twist of her lips that says she’s not angry, just disappointed. She hops off the counter, landing on her bare feet, and brushes past him. “Fine. Keep me updated,” she says to Alice, then disappears into her bedroom. Julia isn’t the type to slam doors, but Alice thinks she’d have liked to, maybe.

“Right,” Margo says. The one word holds more judgment than anything more elaborate could have. “Let’s get started.” She claps her hands together once, a sudden sound that reverberates through the apartment. “We’ve got a spirit to raise.”

*

So, it’s never easy. The first day, Alice takes notes from _A Guidebook to Ethical Necromancy_ as Margo and Eliot head to Brakebills, returning with a stack of books that all of them know are most likely useless. They sit on the couch together in a studious silence that is almost comfortable, the way it had been at Brakebills for those first few weeks when the Physical Kids Cottage deigned to study, before everything fell apart. Time flows quickly. Often it’s Penny or Kady who has to remind them to eat, the three of them either shoveling food down (Alice, Margo) or picking at their plate in wait until they can return to their books (Eliot).

That first night, Alice retreats to her room, takes one long look at the pressed sheets of her empty bed and the dark sweater that’s balled up next to her pillow, and returns to the living room to go over the book again beneath the light of the lantern outside.

_Ethical Necromancy_ , as the title suggests, turns out to be mostly about the debate surrounding the practice. Its editor, one Levi Radorus, seems biased enough to mostly include essays by those who are in favor, limiting the counterarguments to a single treatise on the hazards of defying the natural order. Any other time, Alice would find the debate fascinating, but the lack of practical guidelines—it’s a _guidebook_ , Jesus—only manages to frustrate her. Do it, yes, but _how_? The fuse of her patience burns with every new day Quentin’s death moves further into the past. She won’t let him become a memory, not when the solution is somewhere in between these pages. She won’t.

If her patience is running out, Eliot and Margo’s has never existed in the first place. It takes three days for them to get antsy, five for them to no longer bother hiding it. The both of them are skilled Magicians in their own right, something Alice had been painfully aware of at Brakebills, back when such a thing still mattered. Quentin was—good. Ultimately non-threatening except for when his emotions got the best of him. But Margo and Eliot, though they'd had a whole year of classes to get a leg up on Alice, were the kind of Magicians Brakebills truly wanted to join its ranks, the kind that would go on and do magnificent things if a spell didn't blow up in their faces before that. They did it effortlessly, without ever being seen within two feet of a book, even though everyone knew you didn't get those grades without doing at least some studying. Alice spent her Brakebills days at the library, Eliot and Margo spent theirs at the Cottage entertaining their admirers. And at the end of the day, they achieved roughly the same level. It used to drive her crazy.

Not now, though. She's grateful for the company, even when Margo sighs dramatically on the fifth day and lets her book clatter onto the coffee table with a final thump. “Okay, we need a break.”

Alice hums. “Sure. I can work on my own today.”

“ _We_ includes _you_. We're not bringing Q back if we miss things because we’re exhausted.”

Eliot is studiously ignoring them. Alice knows the lack of progress is eating away at him more than it’s getting to her, but clearly the prospect of giving up, even if only for a few hours, is not an option for him either.

“El,” Margo says, with the kind of inflection that covers an entire debate. He looks up and says nothing at all.

In the end, after an argument that's mostly conducted in loaded silence and pointed looks, Margo vows to return with food and takes off, leaving Alice and Eliot on their own for what Alice realizes is the first time since—God, probably her first year. That time she'd cornered him in the Library, maybe, after things had shattered with Q and they'd all gone to find Fillory. She'd been so _angry_ with him. How stupid all of that seems now.

“I'm going to make some food. Do you want anything?” she asks. Eliot shakes his head, not bothering to take his gaze off his books. She fries an extra egg anyway. Cooking has never been something she's good at, but she can manage a sunny side up with toast just fine. When she’s careful to place it on the small bit of surface that’s not covered in stacks of books and discarded mugs, she nearly misses Eliot’s grimace.

“You should eat.” His continued silence, too much like rejection, makes her regret speaking, but it’s too late at this point. “It’s not like I’m hungry either,” she offers. “But you have to eat.”

Finally he looks at her. “It's not the—” He waves his hand instead of finishing that sentence. “Food just tastes. Different.”

It clicks, then. She could have caught it earlier—should have, probably—but she’s been a little occupied. His wincing when the blinds are open and sunlight hits the apartment a certain way, how he always leaves the room when Kady turns on the fancy surround speaker system for a taste of her eclectic music choices. Alice can’t recall seeing him eat at all.

“It won’t go away unless you eat,” she says. And before he can interrupt her with some dismissive quip, she continues, “I know you’re not exactly waiting for my advice, and you probably don’t want to talk to me after—everything. We’re not friends, I know. It’s fine. But when I came back—just the smell of food made me want to throw up, okay?”

She doesn’t tell him about the weeks she spent at Brakebills South, Quentin bringing her plates upon plates of food that she only stared at in the hope he’d give up sometime soon. Or about the time he brought her bacon, the first food she managed to keep down, and how gently he kissed her then, so careful and sweet; so _him_. She’d never hated him so much, and yet loved him in equal measure.

They’re her memories, not Eliot’s. It feels selfish to want to keep them, irrational almost, but she’ll hoard them anyway. Instead, she says, “It got better once I got over it.”

Eliot chokes on a laugh. “Your advice is to _get over it_?” Alice is sure it took him years of practice to perfect the verbal air quotes. She’d nearly forgotten how one sentence of his could reduce her to some naive girl who’d been sheltered from the real world, and wouldn’t she be shocked to find out how cruel it was? Brakebills Alice found it irritating and intimidating. Alice now finds it nearly unbearable.

“My advice,” she says, grateful she manages to keep her poise instead of snapping at him, “is to find something your stomach won’t reject immediately, and to train yourself. Mayakovsky compared it to physical therapy. It’s going to suck for a while. Not forever.”

Eliot just looks at her for a few long seconds, then slants his eyes. For a second there, he’d almost been his old self again—the guy who always had a witticism at the tip of his tongue, self-appointed King of Brakebills and High King of a magical world. But as quickly as he appeared he’s gone again, replaced by the pale shade in front of her. He puts on a decent show in front of the others. Alice doesn’t know whether to be flattered he’s willing to let his defenses down in front of her.

“Try the eggs,” she says, and hopes it sounds like the olive branch she means it as, because it’s about as much as she can manage right now.

*

Alice returns to her office after a week, squashing down the guilt that brewed when she told Margo and Eliot she does technically have a job and that to abandon it after less than a month is something she simply won’t allow herself to do. Neither is leaving Kady to solve the Library’s mess on her own.

“I’ve got it covered,” Kady says, straightening the mess on her desk and very clearly overwhelmed by the amount of paperwork that’s amassed itself over the week. “Okay, fine, not covered,” she admits. “You were right, there’s something going on in the Underworld. I put Zelda on it, but she didn’t sound very hopeful. Apparently they’re elusive even on a good day.”

“Do you think it has something to do with the book we found?”

Kady looks at Alice with an unnamed emotion behind her eyes, one that Alice would call pity on anyone else. “I think weird shit happens all the time. Maybe we pissed them off by killing their guy.”

Alice shakes her head, walking over to her own desk and checking the messages addressed to her. Kady’s left them unopened, waiting for her return. “No, I don’t think so. There’s something—” She trails off, trying to put into words that niggling awareness that there’s a larger plan to all this, an elaborate tapestry hidden behind a veil that’s beginning to show cracks.

“Are you sure this whole plan is a good idea?” Kady asks, in a tone that makes it clear no theory of Alice’s will convince her today.

“Did you talk to Julia?”

“Yeah, I talk to Julia sometimes,” Kady says, weary. “This isn’t about Julia. Look—” She steps closer to Alice, the tap of her boots loud and clinical on the tiled floor. “I know what it feels like to realize there’s a solution out there, and to throw yourself into that. I also know what it feels like to fail. And I can tell you, the failing hurt a _lot_ worse than the loss did.”

Kady has never broached the topic of Penny to Alice, not since they started working together months ago, and even now his name hangs unspoken in the air between them, somewhere between Kady’s grief and her own. Of course she knows Kady was hurting—she visited her at the hospital, Kady sallow and muted until Alice gave her the key. She just didn’t realize. Didn’t—fine, didn’t care. Or she cared, but not enough to worry, not enough to go back and visit or get her out when things got dire.

And now here Kady is, offering her own story in sympathy, Kady’s version of a warm hug on winter’s day.

“Thanks for the advice,” Alice says, and means it.

Kady shrugs, a little defensive. Almost embarrassed. “You’re my friend. I’m just trying to help.”

*

Just when Alice feels hope start to slip through her fingers, they stumble upon a clue. Somewhat surprisingly—well, she doesn’t mean to be rude, but—it’s Eliot who finds it, not in _Ethical Necromancy_ but in a manuscript Margo brought home from the Black Market. The notes are old, ancient really, their pages barely kept together with a spell, but their content is real. And more valuable than any of them guessed.

“It’s blood magic. Of course,” Alice says. “I should’ve thought of it earlier.”

_Of course_ , Margo mouths, eliciting a faint smile from Eliot. Alice pretends not to see. “I don’t mean to be a wet blanket here, but how are we gonna get blood from a dead guy, let alone find his body?”

The manuscript is in Ugaritic, which Alice only has a passing familiarity with, but Eliot has managed to decode most of it over the course of the last week while Alice was busy handling the latest insurgence against the new Library order. It takes her a minute, to swallow the concoction of guilt and envy her mind has prepared. Why can’t she just be happy they made a breakthrough at all?

It’s hard to remain bitter, though, when his calligraphy, elegant and more legible than her own, neatly spells out the elements of a ritual that will bring a person to life. The magic isn’t as intricate as she anticipated, and it can easily be performed by three advanced Magicians. It seems they might have to down to the Underworld for it to be effective, but that’s not insurmountable either. Eliot has included a simplistic drawing of a circle adorned with three half-moons, and a list of ingredients that includes colloidal silver and middlemist red flower, and none of those are impossible to find. It’s the final page which details the wrench she’s been waiting for: the ritual requires not just blood, but the physical body of the deceased—neither of which they have access to.

Eliot’s handwriting blurs in front of her as it’s replaced by the looping image of Quentin, dispersing into a rain of lights. It made things worse, originally, that there wasn’t even a body to bury. Same as with Charlie. Just meaningless symbolism in a futile attempt at providing closure.

Every battle they’ve ever fought, every spell she’s tried to master, has operated under the principle of one step forward, two steps back. It’s never easy, because why should it be? But something tugs at her memory, a long ago moment in Fillory, her body shaking with the god-magic it could barely contain. And a witch…

“Quentin bartered away his blood to a witch one time,” Alice says, just as Eliot chimes in with, “There was that Hansel and Gretel witch in Fillory.”

Margo frowns as if she’s trying to remember. “That time Martin and Julia left us all for dead?”

“Maybe she still has it. We could make some kind of deal—” In her mind, Alice is already doing the math.

“She can’t have lived far from the Wellspring,” Eliot says. “So we go to Fillory, get the blood, bounce before the Dark King breaks out the guillotine.”

“Okay, voice of reason shouldn’t be my job,” Margo says. She’s drumming her marker onto the table, her bracelets jingling in time to the beat. “But I got the feeling Eliot and I are persona non grata in Fillory at the moment. And we met that witch 300 years ago, who says she’s still there? And even then, we’re still missing a body.”

Eliot has already gotten up, shrugging on his jacket. “Only one way to find out. You managed to fix the clock, right?” He addresses the last bit to Alice, who nods.

Alice watches Margo sigh, a beat where she closes her eyes and composes herself as Eliot walks over to the grandfather clock Alice reanimated with Zelda and Penny’s help. It’s—none of Alice’s business, really. She almost knows how to deal with Eliot, but Margo is a whole other realm of inaccessible. It always eluded her, how someone like Quentin managed to inspire this kind of loyalty in someone like Margo, who is, if not a mean girl, then at least someone who belongs to a different social class. Alice doesn’t fancy herself inferior to Margo’s aloof eminence, but the idea that she could talk to her, even become her friend, is almost laughable.

It hasn’t crossed her mind until now what Margo and Quentin’s friendship meant to Margo. What losing him in the wake of Eliot’s possession might mean. Save one, lose another. Alice has only lost, but she recognizes the exhaustion in Margo’s slumped shoulders, before she rights them again and pushes off the couch.

“If those bitches Ned Stark us, don’t you dare touch my stuff,” she says, disappearing into her bedroom and yelling across the distance, “I will haunt your asses if you burn my Jimmy Choos.”

She returns carrying a bag and a bright blue coat wool coat. “We’ll be right back,” Eliot promises, before grabbing Margo’s hand and pulling her through the doorway.

Alice waits a few beats and then gets up to close it. The apartment is silent, no one home but her. She used to like the quiet, before.

The area around the couch is a mess of books and notebooks, half-empty mugs and the leftover sandwiches she made earlier. She tucks her hair behind her ear and sets to cleaning. Eliot and Margo will be back soon with the blood, and then—then.

But she can’t think about that. Cleaning first; everything else will come later.


	4. Jane's Advice

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Previous chapter: Though opinions in the apartment remain divided, Alice, Eliot and Margo's research finally yields results as they figure out the elements of a ritual to bring a person back to life.
> 
> This chapter: Eliot and Margo head back to Fillory to strike a bargain for Quentin’s blood.

This time, Eliot and Margo keep to the forest, dodging towns and farms in an effort to escape the Dark King’s army. They don’t see Lyra’s gray armor again, only a few errant Fillorians trudging through the woods with food and timber for winter, because while Fillory never gets as cold as New York does, it also doesn’t have the luxury of Earth’s central heating. They’d always managed to keep the castle comfortably balmy with fire and spells, but Eliot still remembers the first winter at the mosaic, icy blasts creeping through the slats of the cottage and snow melting into water that seeped through the roof.

Going by the furtive way the people they meet scurry forward when they see Eliot and Margo, covering their stock with blankets, he guesses the Dark King’s reign hasn’t improved the economy since the last time they were here. Trees—the non-eloquent kind—are chopped in droves, leaving entire fields of stumps. He can’t blame the locals for turning to desperate measures, but the wan faces and patches of cut trees make him long for the Fillory of old anyway.

“Jesus,” Margo says, concisely expressing his feelings. “I’m gonna need a strongly-worded talk with that Lyra if she dares to show her face again.”

“Did she seem familiar to you too?” Eliot asks, recalling his thoughts when he’d first seen her at the tavern. Her shaved head, the dark twinkling eyes. “Almost like—”

“A Pickwick,” Margo finishes. “I only realized when we got back. Pickwicks have served the royal family for ages, huh? Turncoats.” She wrinkles her nose derisively.

They reach the Wellspring with only a few detours. It’s difficult to find their way with 300 years of infrastructural changes and half of the forest having been turned into kindling, but the shed looks exactly the same. After that it’s almost suspiciously easy to find the witch’s house. A path shaped like flat candy canes extends from the river near the Wellspring to her gingerbread house, set in a dense, gloomy part of the woods that is untouched by the locals’ hunt for firewood.

The witch is tending to her garden when Eliot and Margo arrive, pulling out flowers that resemble massive lollipops. The scent of freshly-baked bread and cinnamon as well as other unidentifiable sweet fragrances mingle together into a cushy welcome. Dangerously seductive, is what Eliot would describe it as. Perhaps its charm works better on Fillorians, who haven’t been raised on Earth fairy tales.

“Excuse me,” Margo says, stepping forward. “We’d like to have a word.”

The witch rises from her lollipop patch. She looks exactly as she did 300 years ago, less like a fairy tale villain and more like a strict teacher, or maybe a distant aunt who criticizes the tableware whenever she stops by. “Who is _we_?” she asks, eyes narrow.

Margo straightens her shoulders, drawing herself up to a height that transcends her small frame. “Former High Kings of Fillory, Margo Hanson and Eliot Waugh.”

“Earthlings.” The witch says it in the tone Tick used when Eliot first met him, the way the Lorians and other tribes did, or Arielle’s family whenever they stopped by to observe the progress on the mosaic. “It’s been a while since we got your kind here. Why have you come?”

“A while back,” Eliot says, “give or take a few centuries, a friend of ours made a deal with you—his blood for our lives. We survived, but you kept the blood. Now we need it back.”

The witch observes them with unnerving focus. “Why would you need it?”

“A ritual,” Margo says, her tone brooking no argument. “Name your price and you can go on luring cute little children into your oven, or whatever it is you do.”

The witch’s response is a dry chuckle. “I remember your friend now. He made a similar joke. It gets old.” She approaches, her purple dress trailing the ground and disturbing the sugar crystals covering the front yard. “Very well. My price is a rare flower that only blooms once every century. The Lissuin. Its last flowering season was eighty years ago, and they are near-impossible to get by. Bring me one of those, and I will return your friend’s blood to your care.”

Then, with an enigmatic smile that bears traces of mirth, she returns to her lollipops and pays them no more mind.

*

“Well shit,” Margo says as they trudge back through the woods. “It’s always something here. What do we do now?”

The scar tissue on Eliot’s stomach aches with every step he takes, pain blossoming towards his sore back and legs. He’s never been in particularly good physical health, not after the onslaught of substances he’s inflicted on his body, but this chronic pain feels like a betrayal. It’s the kind of deterioration that belongs to the body of a seventy-year old; he _remembers_ these aches. The opium barely helps. He’d kill for a cigarette right now, a drink, drugs acquired through legal or illegal means, anything—Margo’s disapproving looks be damned—because he can’t fucking think like this. After Mike’s death, he’d at least been able to escape reality, but now he’s not even being granted that.

Suppressing a grimace, he manages a shrug in response before picking out the flat stump of a particularly large tree and sinking down on it, leaving enough space for Margo to settle next to him. Her bright coat, hardly conspicuous for what’s supposed to be a covert mission, brushes his cold skin when she draws his hand into her lap.

“Is this the part where we have a talk about our feelings, or is this more of a silent introspection moment?” she asks.

“Silent introspection, I think.”

“Perfect.”

They sit there for a while, curled into each other to find shelter from the cold. Despite what he said, introspection is about the last thing he wishes for right now. If anything, he’d trade another one of those rare flowers for a moment of peace—five seconds out of his own mind. But the problem with repressing things, he’s realized, is that once that blockade falls away there’s no putting it back up. No hiding from the onslaught. And Jesus Christ, he just wants to hide.

He can feel Margo’s eyes on him, imagines her with that little furrow in between her brows that always undoes him, the same frown she wore when they were in the Brakebills Infirmary and she grabbed his hand, squeezed it too tight, whispered “I’m sorry, I—fuck, _El._ ” When he woke up to a world that was just a bit colder and emptier than it had been before. He wanted to hide then, too, but at least Lipson was good with narcotics.

A white speck of dust lands on his coat. No, not dust. Snow. It melts into the fabric, leaving a small dark patch. Tremors run through his arm where Margo is curled into his side, her body shivering from the cold.

“You could’ve brought a scarf,” he says.

Margo raises her head from where it’s resting on his shoulder, leaning back just far enough for him to catch her doing her best _bitch please_ expression. “A scarf with this coat? You’re off your game.” Then she sobers, like a switch that drains the laughter from her eyes and leaves a cold determination in its wake. Quietly, she says, “Enough with the moping. We’re gonna pay Jane a visit,” before she gets up and holds out her hand for him to take. “Cause I’m not leaving without that blood.”

*

Eliot’s never met Jane or visited her Clock Barrens, but Margo’s storytelling is vivid enough that it almost seems as if he has. What she’s neglected to mention, though, is how damn cramped it is. An eternity spent in a circle that barely stretches to a comfortably-sized New York condo hardly seems worth immortality, but even so Jane greets them with cheer.

“Margo,” she says with a little bow of her head, “I thought I’d see you again.” Then she turns to Eliot and gives him an equally amiable smile. “Charmed to finally meet you in this timeline. Though I do wish it was under different circumstances.”

“Let’s skip the pleasantries,” Margo says. “You know why we’re here.”

Jane’s smile falters the slightest amount, but there’s a kindness to her expression that remains, a warmth that seeps through. “For what it’s worth, I am sorry. I would’ve warned you, but it’s not always possible to predict the direction your futures will take.”

“I’m not even gonna try to make sense of your crypto-bullshit today. Tell us where we can get the stupid plant and we’ll be out of your way.”

A soft wind blows through the curls of Jane’s hair. It’s warmer here in the Clock Barrens than it was outside of its perimeter, and the snow has stopped falling. Just a breeze, caressing the leaves of the trees and brushes that grow in a circle around where they stand. Within the beat between Margo’s command and Jane bending down to pick up a flat woven basket, Eliot realizes the ache in his side has faded along with the snow. A place outside of time. Under any other circumstances, Eliot would be fascinated by the magic it took to create this little glitch.

“I grew this for you,” Jane says, picking a flower out of her basket and holding it out. Its petals are white, almost translucent, and they tremble when a breath of wind brushes by. “One Lissuin flower. Eleia will accept it.”

Eliot desperately tries to tamp down the hope that swells in his chest as Margo tucks it into her waistband and covers it with her coat. “She’d better,” she says. “And, don’t take this the wrong way, but I hope I don’t see you again. It’s always bad news with you.”

“I suppose that’s fair,” Jane says, enigmatic smile back in place. “Though—before I send you two back, a few more things.”

“Jeez, woman. You don’t abide by the laws of time, fine, but we’re on a clock here all right?”

Eliot’s been content to let Margo handle this mission—he’s been content to let her handle most things, these days—so he doesn’t expect Jane to turn to him, with her gentle eyes and downturned brows. “I don’t know if this will be of any comfort to you, but I’ve been around for a while and—I cannot tell you if this mission you’re on will succeed or not. What I can tell you is that not many people in this life are afforded the amount of time Quentin was. We make our choices and we live with them—and Quentin made his. There is strength in that, too. You both lived a long life. A happy one. Take comfort in that, at least.”

The words settle like a weight in the pit of Eliot stomach, a dreaded, cold numbness that slithers down his spine. He leans a little heavier onto his cane so it sinks deeper into the marshy ground as he meets Jane’s gaze, which rather than reassuring now just seems flat and remote. “You’re right,” he says. “That’s not comforting at all.”

Her expression falls a little—didn’t see that coming, then—but she recovers quickly. “The second thing. There will most likely come a time when you will be faced with stakes much higher than you can imagine right now. Please, be careful. Don’t let yourselves be led by deceivers. And as for my personal cause—concerning Fillory, I beg you not to abandon this world. It needs you.” And for this, Jane turns to Margo again. “ _I_ need you.”

Margo’s combative frown clears, and for a second, in the dappled light of the Clock Barrens’ pale sun, it’s as if the elements conspire to create her a crown with nothing but the pure, unfettered magic of Fillory. Then Eliot blinks, and the moment is gone.

“There is a cave,” Jane continues, “beyond the Hen’s Teeth, in the Morgan Downs. If you go there, a knight will show you the way to the Hall of Moons, where you will find a stone—an unpolished gem. You’ll need it, if you’re to free Fillory. I can’t explain any further,” she says, genuinely apologetic, when Margo rolls her eyes. “It will all become clear in time, I promise. I have faith in you.” Eliot is fairly sure that one is meant for Margo and Margo alone.

From the folds of her black cape—and he can at least appreciate a fashion statement when he sees one—Jane digs out a vintage stopwatch. It has over half a dozen hands from what Eliot can see, gilded lines that move at different speeds around the clock dial. “Now. Time for you to go, I believe,” Jane says with a glance at the watch. “Anyone should be lucky to have friends such as you. Good luck.”

With a disorienting _click_ , the Clock Barrens and Jane disappear and Eliot and Margo find themselves back on the candy cane path, in the dark of the forest. It’s almost like Traveling, yet the tremors that run through his limbs are unlike any Traveling Eliot’s ever done. He checks his own watch—no time has passed.

“Does she ever get tired of the whole Melisandre shtick?” Margo asks, shaking out her hands as if getting rid of jitters. “We have to save Fillory, but she can’t give us a how-to beyond ‘find this random rock’? Cause that went so well for Harry Potter.” She’s complaining, but Jane’s speech has clearly struck a cord with her. Beneath her opaque layers of surliness, she’s glowing.

They got the flower they need—one step closer to their goal. Eliot should feel hopeful, energized like Margo’s renewed vigor as she grabs his hand and pulls him along the trail, but instead he only feels tired. Swimming upstream, a cascade of water pushing him back. The ache is back with throbbing intensity.

Jane, with her useless platitudes, can save her own world if she wants to so badly. “Fuck Fillory,” he says, in the soft thrum of the live forest. “Let’s get the blood, and we can go home.”

As Jane predicted, the witch—Eleia—accepts the flower, bored and self-satisfied by the trade-off. Visible through her open door is the fire blazing inside, green and blue flames intermingling, with only a bubbling cauldron missing from the picture. One person who doesn’t need to chop trees in the dark of night in order to survive the winter. A few centuries into the past perhaps Tick would’ve found a way to distribute resources among the people, but now Tick isn’t here and his descendants have thrown in with some Disney villain.

It’s a dangerous apathy that fills a house with magic and warmth as people freeze outside. Margo’s outrage is radiating off of her, while Eliot can’t muster a sliver of it.

The snow is still falling, and Eliot is turning to ice.

*

They’ve placed the grandfather clock in the living room of the apartment, where it stands out like a sore thumb between the modern minimalist interior. It’s not yet dark when Margo and Eliot stumble out and onto the rug, just barely turning dusk, and the living room is empty. The calendar pinned to the fridge says they’ve only missed two days on Earth. Neither of them expresses their relief at that, but Eliot can feel it in the air.

“I think my tits are about to freeze off,” Margo complains, throwing her coat onto the couch and blowing air into her palms. “I’m gonna soak in a hot bath for an hour or two.” She doesn’t wait for a response, only leaves her shoes by the coffee table and disappears with the unspoken threat not to disturb her.

Julia and Penny’s schedules are erratic, taking off and returning to the apartment at odd hours during the day and night, but Kady and Alice tend to be home from work by this time of day. Eliot finds Alice’s room, knocks on the door. There’s a faint humming noise drifting through.

He definitely shouldn’t be in here. The humming appears to be coming from a couple of luminous spheres that hover a few feet above the desk, circling each other in irregular patterns like planets of a warped solar system. Library business, maybe. Alice only moved into the room a few weeks ago, but it’s undeniably hers, marked by the pale pink shirt and numerous dark skirts draped over the chair in the corner. She’s even taken the time to put up some pictures on the hideous driftwood dresser: two adults who must be her parents, with an apple-cheeked Alice wrapped beneath her brother’s arm; Alice, again, now sixteen or seventeen, elated and disheveled next to a beautiful white horse.

And then, more recent ones. Eliot’s surprised to see himself in one: him, Margo, Alice and Quentin. The picture must’ve been taken at a Physical Kids party not long after the start of Alice and Quentin’s first year, all of them holding an absinthe-green drink that was Eliot’s signature cocktail at the time—perfect for testing the alcohol resistance of new freshmen. The four of them are wearing wide smiles, even Alice. They look—so young. He doesn’t remember feeling young, then, but right now that period seems decades into the past, a distant shore slowly sinking into the horizon.

The picture blurs in front of his eyes, and when he scrubs them his fingers come away wet. He has to—sit down, breathe. The bed seems too far away and so he sinks down to the floor instead, his back against the dresser, careful not to disturb the picture frames.

He’s let himself cry once, after the campfire in the dark of his own room. Just once, with the promise to himself to leave it at that. Now the tears won’t stop—another way his body is betraying him. He has to press his palm against his mouth to keep the sounds from spilling over, distantly aware that Alice and Kady might be back at any moment and Alice will find him here, in her room, the room that used to be her boyfriend’s. Sobbing on her Pinterest flatweave rug—over her boyfriend.

It’s only that he can’t will his limbs to move.

The problem with repressing things is that once the barricade comes down, there’s no rebuilding it to the way it was before. Steel walls reduced to ruins, and nothing to stop the avalanche of memories from rushing back in.


	5. Who Wants To Live Forever

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Previous chapter: Eliot and Margo head to Fillory to barter for Quentin's blood and pay Jane Chatwin a visit, who gives them advice on how to save Fillory. 
> 
> This chapter: Tensions rise in the apartment.

The vial of Quentin’s blood seems so innocuous, sitting there on Alice’s desk. It could pass for a perfume bottle, with elegant curls of silver coiling around the stem, bright against the wine-red contents. She could place it between her makeup and skin care products and people would be none the wiser.

It’s overall entirely too plain to cause the current tremble of her hands.

With a quick glance at her grimoire, Alice executes Liefeld’s Impermeable Ward, and from the tips of her fingers, luminous tendrils unfurl to wrap themselves around the vial. She only recently stumbled across the spell while cataloging for the Library. It’s an obscure one, and it quickly became obvious why—it’s easier to break through than a simple door lock. One afternoon at the office, a little under-stimulated and a lot bored, she figured out the reason for that. There’s an inconsistency in the transcription, where the lettering of the original has faded.

Some brainstorming with Alia, a couple of trial runs, and the spell finally lives up to its name, hopefully all the more effective for being so obscure.

The vial protected, Alice considers exchanging the bedroom’s wards for something a bit more heavy-duty as well. She hadn’t thought it necessary to do anything more than a simple alarm, until last night, when she returned home late after a long and exhausting round of meetings with a group of disgruntled Portland Librarians, where for a few tense moments she feared Kady would trample all over Alice’s own shaky attempts at diplomacy. By some miracle things had turned out fine, only for her to return home and realize her wards had been tripped. By Eliot.

Did he think she wouldn’t have private wards on her bedroom, as if she’s some kind of amateur? She works for the Library, a formerly fascist organization that she’s been endeavoring to restructure, _please_. But of course he wouldn’t think of installing wards unless there are servants to do it for him.

She spent approximately half a minute being mortified that he must’ve seen Q’s sweater balled up between her sheets, like the evidence of a lipstick-stained shirt, and then remembered that he’d _been in her room_. There’s absolutely no reason why he should be in here, and to add to her confusion, nothing has disappeared or even been disturbed. If he touched anything, he took care to restore it back to its original state.

A mystery, then. Unless she goes out right now to knock on his bedroom door and confronts him about it, and there’s nothing she’d like to do less. Because after everything, Eliot isn’t her friend. They’re allies—barely—only ever connected through Quentin, and Quentin is gone. She’s only too aware of the precariousness of that bond. And there are questions, she’s starting to realize, that she’d rather not know the answer to.

She decides against bolstering her wards. If he tries to enter again, he’ll notice she’s changed them, and that’ll lead to the exact conversations she’d rather avoid.

Instead, Alice finds Kady in the kitchen where she’s perched on a barstool, talking to Julia. Kady waves her over, and she hesitates for a second as she meets Julia’s eyes. The last time they talked was—a long time ago, for two people who live in the same apartment. Then Julia smiles, briefly but genuinely, and Alice sits down across from them.

“Morning,” Julia says, offering Alice a cup of coffee. It’s black, no sugar and no milk, but Alice accepts out of politeness. Kady, who knows Alice’s preference for vanilla syrup, hides her smirk behind her own mug. “Kady was just explaining what you guys are doing at the Library. Sounds badass.”

“It’s a lot of paperwork, honestly,” Alice says. She steals a grape off Kady’s plate. “Kady just tries to avoid that part.”

That’s Kady cue to launch into a forceful diatribe against the perils of red tape, which allows Alice and Julia to find some common ground as they glance knowingly at each other.

While they finish the rest of their breakfast, Julia fills them in on what she’s been up to, which is apparently getting her degree at Brakebills. “I’ve been thinking of teaching,” she says. “Well, Fogg suggested it, and I guess I do need to start making money at some point.”

It shouldn’t be a surprise—Julia moving on. Most of them have, becoming the productive members of society their parents raised them to be. Five weeks ago, Alice thought she was one of them, but she can hardly classify what she’s doing now under ‘moving on’.

The shrink her parents sent her to after Charlie’s death once said there’s no right way to grieve. She thinks Julia might disagree with that.

*

“Good for her,” Kady says once Penny has dropped them off at the office. There’s a gentle warmth to her tone that says more about her mended friendship with Julia than her words do, and it’s that warmth which causes a strange jealousy to rise in Alice. She’s always considered it an ugly emotion, jealousy, one she tries even harder to suppress these days. Today, she finds that she can’t quite manage. Her and Kady bonded over being the outsiders in a group that seemed to become more tight-knit with each apocalyptic event, and somehow Alice started counting on that, forgetting that once upon time Kady had a best friend that wasn’t her. She wants to be happy for Kady, and for Julia whose face is slowly starting to regain some color. But it’s hard to be happy for others when she herself is so mired in misery.

Kady notices her silence and throws a balled-up memo her way. It bounces off Alice’s shoulder, onto the ground. “Hey. Meeting with Zelda’s in ten, you wanna go over the notes?”

“Honestly, I just want this Underworld mess dealt with.” Alice closes her eyes and tries to squeeze the tension out of her neck. It doesn’t do much in the way of helping.

“You and me both, girl.”

Alice never thought she’d end up with an office job, spending her days writing reports and grinding her teeth through meetings. When she thought about her future, she envisioned something eminent and valuable. Teaching, maybe, like Julia. Yet nothing could be more valuable in their current world than what she’s doing right now. She’s contributing in a way even her teenage ambitious self would’ve never dared to dream.

And it’s inconceivably tedious.

It’s impossible to separate her growing disinterest in Library politics from the general dissatisfaction that she’s come to associate with life after death. The cause and effect eludes her. Maybe she’s bored with her job because nothing could hold her interest right now, and forcing herself only worsens the dissatisfaction. Or maybe she was never meant for the Library, and all it does is contribute to her state of mind.

She doesn’t like to think about it much, how that voice in her head sounds like a whiny, ungrateful bitch for second-guessing the chances she’s been offered, but she can’t help feeling it. This is her destiny? Wasting away her days in the drab interior of the Library, a slow crawl towards death? She’s surprised Kady hasn’t jettisoned yet.

Alice can’t leave before Kady does. And anyway, Zelda asked for her specifically. They need her, just like Quentin needs her.

_Always so desperate to please_ , the memory of her Mirror self echoes, face twisted into a sneer. _Like that’ll make them love you_.

Luckily, that’s the moment Zelda chooses to waltz in, flooding them with a laundry list of urgent cases: a problem with the translations of the animals’ books, magic leakage in El Paso, shortage of space because the books can no longer be shelved in the Underworld.

“About the Underworld,” Alice says, sensing her opportunity, “have we managed to contact them?”

Zelda’s head tilts to the side as her hands flutter nervously in the air, conducting an invisible orchestra. “I’m afraid not. Some rumors, nothing useful. But—” She pauses, her hands meeting in front of her chest. “There is something else.”

Nothing good in Alice’s life has ever started with those words uttered in that particularly foreboding tone. Zelda makes a high-pitched noise, something between a sigh and a agitated hum, offers a tight smile, and continues. “We started noticing changes yesterday, in the books of people who died recently. As you know, books normally end when the person dies, but—well, some of the books changed.”

“Changed how?” Kady says, slowly.

“They all have the same ending as the other books do: ‘thus ending the story of’. But instead of blank pages following the ending—there’s music notes. The same song, for all of them.”

“I don’t even want to ask,” Kady says, followed by, “Which song?”

“Who Wants To Live Forever. By Queen.”

Alice shares a look with Kady, who instead of amused now just looks fed up. “They’re fucking with us, right? They’ve gotta be.”

“But who’s ‘they’?” Alice asks, adding a note in the margin of an old memo that’s still on her desk. She’s in the process of listing all the clues again in the hope that it’ll trigger something, when Zelda makes the squeaky noise again.

“That’s not all.”

Oh Jesus.

Zelda’s almost bouncing in place now, like a jittery, gray jack-in-the-box. “The people whose books end on the song? They’ve all come back to life.”

*

“There’s a fucking zombie apocalypse now?” Penny says when Alice and Kady explain the situation to the others. It’s the middle of the day and they’re gathered in the living room, everyone seated on the couch and staring at the two of them in various states of disbelief, except for Penny who looms over Julia.

“Not zombies,” Kady says. “Like—real people. Alive and breathing.”

Penny holds up his hands, palms forward. “Nah, fuck that noise. I know where this is going. You know who dies first on _The Walking Dead_? Not the white dude, that’s for sure!”

Margo is tapping something into her phone, her long nails making rhythmic clicking noises against the screen. “I think the news just broke. People are losing their shit.” She frowns. “Trump tweeted. Ugh—I’m not even gonna read that out loud.”

Penny points at her phone. “See!”

“You said people who died recently came back to life.” Eliot’s voice is quiet, carefully leveled. There’s a split second where Alice feels something like pity for him—she’s surprised she still has room for it. She presses her lips together and shakes her head.

“I checked his book.” It was the first thing she did after Zelda left, ducking out of the office before Kady would have the chance to say anything, her hands shaking as she pulled out the green volume. “It just—ends.”

“Well that doesn’t make any sense,” Margo says, abandoning her Twitter feed to rejoin the conversation. “Why is Q the exception? Smells fishy if you ask me.”

Alice is grateful that Margo, at least, is on her side. She wasn’t expecting a change of heart from Julia, Kady’s been tellingly silent, and Penny clearly isn’t willing to jeopardize his reconciliation with Julia. “I guess we’ll just keep looking,” she says.

“Okay, no, enough.” Julia’s been quiet, seated on the back of the sofa with her feet dug into a soft throw blanket, but now she climbs off and goes to stand next to Penny. “I’m not playing this game.” Her gravelly smoker’s voice, usually so serene, is oddly well-suited to commanding attention. She looks at each of them in turn. “Don’t you guys see that they’re messing with us? This is what they do. They’re just laughing at us.” The volume rises the more worked up she gets. “I’m not doing this,” she repeats.

“And you’re the one who gets to decide that?” says Eliot. It’s pretty clear from his voice that it’s a rhetorical question. “Kinda selfish, don’t you think?”

Julia barks out a bitter laugh. “Hey, guess what? It’s not all about you.”

“Okay, c’mon.” Penny lays his hand on Julia’s arm. She stiffens but doesn’t shake him off. “This isn’t gonna make anyone feel better about themselves.”

“No? I’m feeling better already,” Julia says, smiling thinly at Eliot, who rises up from the couch to his full height, no doubt about to say something cutting and cruel.

“Jesus,” Kady says. “Penny’s right. Everyone just—take a moment, all right? Count to fucking ten.”

“Can I have a word?”

It takes Alice a moment to realize Julia is talking to her. Eliot and Margo stare at them until they’ve disappeared into Julia’s bedroom. It’s been too long since high school for peer pressure to have any effect on Alice, but even so she isn’t sure which position she’s supposed to take, here. She’s on their side, isn’t she? Yet Julia’s anger leaves a sour taste in her mouth.

“Sorry, I don’t have another chair,” Julia says, pulling out the one from under her desk and sitting cross-legged on the bed herself. There’s a collection of rings on the bedside table—hers or Penny’s, Alice can’t tell. Outside, the voices of the others are blending together, Margo’s low tones the only ones loud enough to identify. “I didn’t mean to snap out there.” Julia rubs her temples, careful not to smudge her makeup.

“You weren’t snapping at me.”

“Eliot just gets on my nerves sometimes. God knows how Q put up with it,” Julia mutters, mostly to herself. “I guess—I don’t know how to say this to make you understand, but I don’t think we should be doing this.”

That much has been clear from Julia’s passive aggressive silence and general avoidance. “You don’t think _I_ should be doing this,” Alice corrects. “Why not?”

“What are the chances that this is the one time something we do doesn’t go completely south?”

“We’ve taken bigger risks.” They have, is the thing. Julia has taken bigger risks than any of them. Alice can’t read her well enough to know if she’s being completely honest about her motives.

Julia wraps her hands around her ankles and waits. Then, with the slow clamber of words that have been on her mind for longer than this conversation, she says, “I don’t think it’s what he would want.”

Her dark eyes are pleading. Alice realizes very suddenly that she doesn’t want to be having this conversation. “Okay.”

“I mean, you said it yourself. He stopped running.”

“I said I wasn’t sure what happened. It all went so quickly—” Alice closes her eyes against the memory, then opens them again when that just makes it worse. The shower of sparks, so inappropriately enchanting. It’s a big joke of the universe that the worst moments in Alice’s life are forever haunted by pretty lights.

Julia apparently has no time for mercy. “Fine, I wasn’t there. But, Alice, I’ve been here for years, longer than any of you.” What a dirty card to play, Alice thinks. As if the amount of time matters. “He’s been my best friend for pretty much all my life. I’ve been there, through the notes, and the hospitals and—you know my mother sent _me_ to therapy the first time? Fucked up dad and a fucked up friend, of course there had to be something wrong with me too, right?” There’s a well of bitterness beneath Julia’s words, a muddy tangle of feelings. Alice doesn’t know why she ever thought Julia was coping any better than her. “Fuck, _you_ saw him. If he was done—” A small crack in her composure when her voice breaks, and she has to swallow. “Then he was done.”

“How can you just let go like that?” Belatedly, Alice realizes it sounds like an accusation.

“I probably seem like a stone-cold bitch to you, and—if that’s the case, then so be it. But part of me always thought we’d end up here.”

“You sound remarkably calm about that.”

“Calm?” Julia’s laugh is icy and devoid of joy. “I’m _furious_. About all of it. Him leaving me after everything we’ve been through. Getting my magic back at the cost of the one person I would’ve given up everything for. But I can’t do this and then fail. I can’t run myself into the ground for something that may not end up working. And if he doesn’t want us to save him—” She trails off and leans back slightly. She’s made her case.

“I can’t stop now,” Alice says. She’s embarrassed at how desperate she sounds, after Julia’s arguments. “Eliot won’t stop.”

It’s the wrong thing to say by the way Julia’s shoulders draw together. “I spent three months trying to keep Q from burning down the fucking universe—or himself—and I failed at that. I can’t do this again. I’m allowed to be done too.” She gets up and walks towards the door. Stands next to it holding the handle, an effective, silent communication. “So you can deal with it. All of it. I’m done, Alice.”

And then she opens the door, and sends Alice back out into the living room.

*

Eliot and Margo accost her the second she rejoins them on the couch. She’d rather be alone right now, but she’d have to pass them to get to her bedroom anyway, and they’ve clearly been waiting for her to return. Now that she’s been let into their exclusive inner sanctum she’ll have to play by its rules. It doesn’t escape her notice that she’s only been allowed entry once Quentin is gone.

“She’s got some nerve,” Eliot says, flicking his hand to light a cigarette, which he defiantly takes a drag of in the middle of the living room. Kady isn’t there to tell him off for it. One of the rules of the clique is that Alice won’t tell, probably. “Let that hedge-bitch try and stop us.” It’s clear that the ‘us’ includes Alice.

What he doesn’t know, and what she doesn’t know how to explain, is that Julia’s words have rattled her. She’s tapped at the bottom of Alice’s carefully constructed house of cards, jolted it just enough that it’s careened to the side. All that by asking the one question Alice very carefully has steered clear of.

What if Quentin doesn’t want to be saved?

What if Julia’s right, and this really is a Sisyphean task?

What if—and here Alice has to carefully keep her face blank before Eliot and Margo—what if what she saw in Mirror Realm wasn’t just her mind constructing the worst reality, but Quentin _giving up_.

“We don’t need her,” Margo says, stealing Eliot’s cigarette. She puts it in between her plum lips, then pitches the smoldering butt into someone’s half-empty glass of wine. “We’ve got our very own nerd.”

“Thanks,” Alice says dryly as Margo grins at her.

Meanwhile her thoughts are happily playing a nightmarish tag game, memories stumbling into each other—a million little firefly-specks swallowing Q whole, Penny’s arms too tight and yet not tight enough to keep her from shattering; snow falling around her in a kaleidoscope of crystals that are suddenly visible to her enhanced eyes; Charlie’s eyes sparking with blue as his cruel laughter fills her ears. And through it all, chasing the memories, the mantra of whatifwhatifwhatif—

“What if,” Alice starts, Eliot and Margo’s eyes on her.

Then the lights go out.

When they flicker back on, it takes Alice a second to notice the card that’s appeared in her hand. It’s a simple playing card, one with red lines on the back. King of hearts. The illustrated sword disappearing into the king’s almost cartoonishly drawn heads feels like a cruel joke, considering. She looks up. Margo is staring at her own card like it could catch fire at any moment.

Carefully, Alice places hers on the coffee table. Margo follows, then, slowly, Eliot.

On the marble, three cards in a row. Alice’s king of hearts, Margo’s queen, and Eliot’s knave. Alice feels a shiver run through her as next to her, Margo grabs Eliot’s hand.

First the book, now these playing cards. Signs that someone, somewhere, is trying to tell them something.


	6. Pete

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Previous chapter: As the recently deceased are coming back to life in what is definitely _not_ a zombie apocalypse, Julia explains why she doesn't support Alice's plan to bring Quentin back. Alice doubts, and the gang receives another message.
> 
> This chapter: Pete makes an appearance.

“Say that line again?” Alice connects her middle and index finger, hooks them together, then extends her thumb along the second axis. It’s a variation on Popper 84, not one Eliot recognizes. He consults the words she’s written down, pronouncing the Ancient Greek, and this time a tiny bullet of light appears to hover above the cards.

Margo looks doubtful. “This isn’t it.”

“Give it a minute,” Alice says.

“We’ve given it several minutes, hon. It’s like watching _Cats_ , all sequins and no substance. Move, let me try.” The orb dissolves as Margo makes space for herself, pushing Alice to the edge of the couch.

She executes a simple second-year Revealing Charm. Eliot can see Alice rolling her eyes, until Margo tucks her hair behind her ears and leans forward, placing her Fairy eye in front of the white smoke that curls around the floating cards. She hovers there for a bit, silently, once in a while adjusting her position.

“Your Circumstances are wrong,” Alice says, after a couple of minutes of this, sounding more than a little smug. She must’ve noticed a while ago and remained silent. Not out of politeness, Eliot guesses.

“They’re not wrong.”

“It’s a waxing crescent moon, not waning.”

“Waxing? What day is it? Fuck.” Margo shakes her hands, the cards fluttering back to the table. One misses the surface and hits the carpet. The king of hearts, balefully observing their failures. “I’m on Fillory time.”

Alice sighs. “Doesn’t matter anyway. The wards are too powerful. Whoever sent these cards, they’ve made sure to scrub them of any identifying spellwork.”

“Cryptic fuckers. What’s wrong with a simple email, huh? A letter by raven. ‘Dear BFFs, I’m stuck here, please come get me. Signed—”

Eliot cuts her off before she can finish her sentence. “I love a good flair for the dramatic, but I’m starting to get a little over the symbolism too.” It’s the understatement of the century. He was done way before the zombies and poltergeists showed up. Long before that, really. Done since he woke up in the Infirmary. Of course it can’t ever be easy to resurrect someone—if it were, everyone would be doing it and they’d gleefully be teaching it at Brakebills—but does the process of it have to look like a 90s B horror movie? Does everything they do have to be so goddamn hard?

Alice assembles the cards and places them in between the pages of _Relyon’s History of Blood Magic (1430-1480)_ , looking about as pale as Eliot feels. “I think we should just do it,” she says. She sounds decisive, like she’s been thinking it for a while and only now scrounged up the courage to speak the thought into existence. “I’ve done about as much research as I can stomach. We’ve got the guidelines and ingredients for the ritual, we’ve got Quentin’s blood, and I think I figured out a way to circumvent the whole—missing body issue. Let’s face it, we’re not gonna get any more prepared than this.”

Eliot could just about kiss her for suggesting it. “That,” he says, “is the best idea I’ve heard all week.”

“Amen,” Margo agrees. “So, what, we just need to find something shiny we can offer to Smaug?”

From the folds of her skirt, Alice grabs her phone and opens up a web page. “Already found something.” Of course she has. “I just need to go talk to Pete about it.”

“Perfect. You go talk to your hustler while El and I do some more of Jane’s dirty work.”

Right, Jane. Eliot almost forgot about her whole Hashtag Free Fillory quest. In truth, in the day since they last went through the grandfather clock, Fillory has hardly crossed his mind at all. It’s only Jane’s advice—to take comfort in the fact that Quentin lived a full life—that hounds him in the moments when he can no longer divert his mind and is instead forced to linger on every memory he’d rather drown in amnesia. What’s a full life when it didn’t even really happen according to everyone he knows? What comfort is he supposed to find in that life being ripped away from him, as well as any possibility for a future, as a result of his own mistakes?

_We make our choices and we live with them,_ is what she said. Well, Eliot’s making his choice, here and now, to fix those mistakes. She should be happy with that.

And so why should he save Fillory for Jane? They didn’t want him as High King. In the end, they didn’t want Margo as High King either, and yet she’s committed to saving their asses anyway, with that typical fierceness he admires so much. Usually. “Can’t the Jane sitch wait?”

“Are you kidding me?” Margo says, inexplicably irked. “Your _wife_ is stuck in Fillory-past.”

“And she’ll still be there after we get back from the Underworld. That’s kind of the thing about the past.”

He has to raise his voice for the last part of that sentence since Margo’s already disappeared into her bedroom. Not even a minute later she’s back, carrying her bag and coat. “You guys have fun with sleazy Pete. I’m getting my crown back,” she says, stomping into the clock and closing the door with a little too much force. It stands there, rocking slightly even after she’s disappeared.

“So,” Eliot says, turning to Alice. “Are you up for a co-op?”

*

They have to walk to Pete’s apartment seeing as Penny’s conveniently nowhere to be found—possibly it’s part of his newest Traveling strike, in an effort to be recognized as more than their personal Uber. His words. More likely he’s in the Bahamas or Brazil, assisting Julia in her ‘research’, which for some reason always involves beaches. Eliot wonders if those assignments come directly from Henry’s office.

Fuck them, honestly.

“I thought you were doing better,” Alice says, after a few minutes of attempting to make her slow walk look casual so he can keep up with her. It’s nice of her to make the effort, he reminds himself, rather than lingering in the bitterness.

“It’s—mercurial, let’s say.” Some days, he doesn’t need his cane at all, though he’s taken to carrying it around everywhere. At this point he figures he might as well make it part of his persona. It’s a little Oscar Wilde, he feels, romantic and dandyish in a way that suits him.

Alice offers the tiniest hint of a smile. “Fitting. I can look into it, if you want. Healing’s not my discipline, but the Library has resources.”

She’s been kind to him, ever since he came back, in a way that makes him feel vaguely guilty for reasons he can’t quite pinpoint. Perhaps because there’s nothing he can offer her in return—nothing she’d want to hear, anyway—or because of the current of envy he feels towards her—well, her everything, really. In the end, no matter which powers she betrays, she’ll always be Alice Quinn, star student who gets a job even without a degree, who gets the power and the guy.

Well, not the guy, maybe. Not really.

“Thanks,” he says.

She raises her shoulder in a neat shrug. “Sure.”

For a Tuesday in New York City it’s oddly quiet outside, even for winter, and it isn’t until they pass a grocery store with its windows smashed, graffiti spray-painted in dripping red on the walls of the house next door, that Eliot realizes why.

_And this shall be the plague with which the Lord will strike all the peoples that wage war against Jerusalem. Zechariah 14:12._

“That’s not good,” Alice says, taking a picture of the damage on her phone and sending it to Kady in a WhatsApp conversation that Eliot can see is named ‘Librarians Dewey it better’. He can’t imagine either one of them picking that.

He remembers endlessly long sermons that would wither away the little free time he had as a teenager. Romans 3:23 to Leviticus 18:22. “Forget about zombies,” he says, picking up speed to pass the building. “Once they whip out the Bible verses we’re all fucked.”

Pete lives in a suspiciously nice high-rise in Midtown Manhattan, with a handsome but dour usher and brass elevator doors. He’s on the phone when he waves them into the apartment, looking like one of the millions of agitated businessmen that walk the streets every day. “Sorry, rude of me,” he says, after leaving Eliot and Alice on the couch for ten minutes to stare at his truly baffling collection of modern art. “D’you like it?” he asks, noticing Eliot’s interest in a sculpture that may or may not be of two geckos getting it on.

“It’s—eclectic.”

“Glad to see you’re spending your wages well,” Alice says with a sweet smile. Pete seems pleased with the compliment. That’s the thing about Alice, Eliot considers. She looks so nice.

Pete pours them a drink then joins them on the couch, pressing ‘ignore’ on three calls in that timespan. “So, what was it you wanted? You didn’t say.”

“It’s an Elder Scroll,” Alice says, showing him the picture on her phone. “You’ve got one.”

“Well—yeah, I do. Cost me a lot of money.”

“We need it,” Eliot says.

Pete squints, staring at the two of them as if he’s not entirely sure they’re being serious. “I’m sorry, you want me to _give_ it to you?” His eyes widen when they don’t respond. “No.”

“I can offer you whatever access to information you need,” Alice says. “The Library has resources.”

“So does Lovelady.”

“You work for me.”

“Uh, no, I’m an independent contractor for the Library. You guys don’t even offer health care.”

“I’m sorry, I think we’re misunderstanding each other.” Alice offers him the same saccharine smile from earlier, except this time there’s no mistaking the intent behind it. “We weren’t asking. Kady saved you, you owe us.”

“Then why isn’t Kady here?” Pete rolls his eyes, leaning back into his blindingly white couch to stretch his arms along the back. “Look, I don’t even keep the scroll here. So good luck with that.”

Eliot feels along the edges of the space around him, extending his magic towards the bounds of the apartment. Making shit fly is beginner’s level telekinesis compared to this, but he got far enough into the scholarly side of it to find the scroll with ease. It’s not even in a safe, simply locked into a cupboard in Pete’s dining room a few feet to their right.

The cupboard rattles, the Elder Scroll knocking against its walls like a fly trapped behind glass.

“It’s warded,” Pete says.

Alice doesn’t even lift a finger to unlock the cupboard. “Badly,” she says.

*

“I think we just stole that,” Alice pants out once they’ve stopped running—or limping, in Eliot’s case. It’s snowing again, the ice lashing against their faces, and Alice looks very, very red. She pauses to stare at Eliot, wide-eyed and stunned. Then a smile splits her face, and she doubles over with laughter. “Shit, we totally stole that.”

“We absolutely did.” The laughter hurts, still, but it also feels good. He wasn’t sure his face could still stretch that way.

Alice blows hot air into her palms as she’s coming down, quick aftershocks of giggling hitting her almost as if by surprise each time. “I don’t even know why I did that. Kady’s going to kill me.”

“Delinquency is definitely not a good look for someone running an organization that guards all the knowledge in the magical world.”

She makes a lofty little clicking noise with her tongue and grabs his arm, dragging him along the icy roads. “I’ll make it up to Pete. After,” she says.

With the whole Elder Scroll mission going a little quicker than expected, they make a detour through West 46th Street, picking up pizza along the way from one of the restaurant owners brave enough to venture outside despite the threat of the rising Undead. In their exhilarated mood just about everything is funny, including the fact that they keep slipping, dragging each other upright after every patch of treacherous ice. It feels normal, almost, like they’re just roommates whose highlight of the week is blowing money on takeout on a whim instead of cooking at home like responsible adults.

The giddy feeling lasts until they return to the apartment, where Margo’s sitting at the kitchen counter, a gray-green stone the size of a small fist in front of her. “You guys had fun,” she says, her face blank.

Alice hovers behind Eliot’s shoulder. “You found your stone. That’s good.”

“Yeah.”

“We got the scroll,” Eliot says. He steps forward, running his hand past Margo’s rigid shoulders and pressing a kiss into the crown of her head. She smells like pine wood and rain. “And I got you the fig and goat cheese pizza you like.”

Mollified, she turns her head into his chest and lets him wrap his arms around her. “From Giuseppe’s?”

“How long have we known each other? Of course.”

He can feel her smile spread against his chest. “I’m not sharing,” she says.

*

The second cold shower comes courtesy of Kady, whose arrival is announced before they see her with the sound of keys hitting the bowl by the door with a clang. “Guess who I just got off the phone with,” she says, brandishing her phone as she marches up to them. She’s not Margo, but it’s times like these Eliot remembers Kady’s their resident Battle Magician. “No really, guess.”

“There’s some pizza left,” Alice says, biting into a slice of pear and Gorgonzola.

“Pete. I just got off the phone with Pete.”

Alice hooks her foot behind the chair next to her and pulls it away from the counter, motioning for Kady to take a seat. “How’s he doing?”

Kady crosses her arms.

“It’s fine,” Alice says, yielding to Kady’s stare. “Sorry. We just—needed that scroll. I’ll find a way to fix it, okay?”

Kady stares at her a moment longer, then deflates, like the outrage’s being drained out of her with a simple apology from Alice. “Just call me next time.” She grabs a slice from Alice’s pizza, wincing when she bites into it and carefully putting it back down like it might be poisonous. “Anyway, that’s not all,” she says, before launching into an explanation that involves a lot of names Eliot doesn’t recognize. It concerns the zombie apocalypse which they’re not calling a zombie apocalypse, for some reason, and the question of whether the Library holds the authority to wipe non-Magicians’ memories if that means they can avoid World War III.

Eliot tunes out fairly quickly. It’s more interesting to simply watch Alice and Kady, firing on all cylinders. He’s not sure he quite understands their dynamic or where it stems from—clearly he missed a bit of character development while he was busy being the Monster’s possessee—but it seems to be working for them.

Next to him, with even less interest in the proceedings, Margo is quieter than usual. She’s turning Jane’s stone over and over in her hands, like it’ll disappear if she lets it out of her sight.

*

Smoke-rabbits emerge from the fumes of Eliot’s cigarette, playing hopscotch in the air. There’s something comforting about night in New York City, the dotted lights across the skyline proof that there’s other people out there, awake at the witching hour, staring out at the same darkness. The sight of a star-lit sky has only ever made him feel lonely, reminding him of endless desolate Indiana planes where he may as well have been the only living boy in the world. Even when you’re alone in New York, you’re never the only one.

The terrace doors creak. Eliot doesn’t look up until the shuffling steps pause next to him against the balcony. It’s Julia. Her face is bare, her dark hair piled on top of her head into a messy bun. There’s a colorful quilt wrapped around her shoulders and dark circles underneath her eyes.

She leans onto the balustrade without glancing his way even once. “I really need this cigarette right now, so I’ll shut up if you shut up.”

Eliot figures his silence is enough of a reply. Their smoke mingles, every breath Julia exhales a deep sigh accompanied by closed eyes.

It’s hard to be angry at someone when they look miserable.

“Married life not everything it’s made out to be?” he says eventually, because he’s not that much of a saint after all.

Julia’s next exhale is just a little more forceful. “No offense, Eliot. But shut the fuck up.” Then she inhales again, rolling her shoulders back.

The dark night casts her in black and white, and like this she almost looks like a character out of a French movie, one of those extremely long, artsy soft-core porn ones. Smoking her cigarette as a sexy metaphor for existential ennui. Eliot’s a little envious of the way she makes her misery look artful rather than just pitiful.

“I fucking hate this,” she says, breaking her own rule without elaborating. Then, after a long pause, “Every morning I wake up, and for a few seconds everything seems fine. And then I remember. And it all just falls apart.” She doesn’t look like she spent her day lounging on a tropical beach. She looks small and brittle, like she hasn’t seen the sun in weeks. It’s the first time in recent memory Eliot can remember liking her. “And then— _then—_ I get caught up in these what-ifs. Butterfly effect. If I’d just—or if he had, or if you hadn’t—” Her voice trails away, getting lost in the sound of ambulance sirens below.

“If I hadn’t shot the Monster,” he continues for her.

She’s silent as she finishes her cigarette and pitches it over the balcony, then immediately lights another one. “I don’t blame you,” she says.

“Why not?” He breathes in some of the cold night air, letting it settle into his lungs, imagining it purifies the smoke he left earlier. “I shot the Monster because I couldn’t bear losing him. Fucking irony, am I right.” His laugh comes out bitter. “I know it’s my fault. You don’t have to spare me.”

He’s never said that out loud before. Julia looks out at the skyscrapers, unblinking. “Okay,” she says. No argument. It’s freeing, to say it and not have to argue about it. Margo, he knows, would have argued, and maybe Julia’s acquiescence should feel damning, but it doesn’t. There’s no expectations here, no reason to pretend. Just naked honesty.

“I’ve never really lost someone,” Julia says. “Not like this. I don’t know why I thought it would suck less, but I just—miss him.” She shakes her head, like that wasn’t what she meant to say at all.

“He was better than any of us.”

Julia breathes out a quiet laugh. “No he wasn’t,” she says, sounding tired. “He was just a guy. Honestly kind of a dick sometimes. But he was the guy who was my best friend.” The ash from her cigarette glows red. It’s easier to focus on than her gleaming eyes. “I was pissed at him, you know. He stopped talking to me. I think—it probably started way earlier than I’m imagining it did. Maybe it was all because of what I did to him when I joined Marina. That’d be a joke.”

“I think it probably didn’t have anything to do with you,” he ventures. “It’s just—depression, or whatever.”

“Or whatever, yeah.” Her second cigarette is dwindling. In a few hours the sun will come up, and neither of them will have slept. “Fuck,” she says, and then, with the eagle-eyed precision of a sharpshooter, “I think he was in love with you.” Eliot stills. For the first time since she stepped out onto the balcony, she looks at him. “Don’t—I don’t need the story. Not if he didn’t want to tell me himself.”

“Kind of useless,” he says, “to hold that pettiness over a dead guy.”

As expected, Julia laughs. She takes one last drag and crushes the butt against the balcony. “Goodnight, Eliot. If you find him, say hi for me.”

He stays until the sun comes up, which turns out not to be that long anyway, imagining all the timelines in which Julia went to Brakebills. He thinks he would’ve been her friend in some of them, at least. She’s more fun when she’s sharper, someone he can actually relate to. Just not in this timeline, not right now.

It’s clear, though, that she won’t try to stop them, and he’ll take that over any friendship she could offer.


	7. Down, Down, Down

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Previous chapter: Eliot and Alice "borrow" one of Pete's prized magical artifacts to gift to the Underworld Dragon, and in the process find a way to connect. Meanwhile, Margo heads back to Fillory to retrieve the stone Jane Chatwin cryptically suggested would help them save Fillory.
> 
> This chapter: Alice, Eliot and Margo forge ahead with their plan.

The night before Underworld Day, as Margo has taken to calling it, Alice doesn’t sleep. As the sun slowly wanes and then sinks below the city’s skyline she tosses and turns in bed, until she’s forced to give up and decides to revisit her notes instead. She spends a few minutes swallowing back tears when she finds scribbles in an old copy of one of her Brakebills textbooks, a physical remnant of the times she and Quentin studied for their exam on Probability Magic together. Barring that, she gets up to make tea, quietly so as not to draw the attention of Eliot and—Julia? Something about strange bedfellows, Alice thinks—then goes over her notes again, as if she hasn’t memorized them yet.

But she doesn’t sleep.

When she walks into the kitchen that morning to find Margo, Eliot and Kady already up and about, she feels anything but tired. Kady pours her some coffee and smiles at her, the kind of smile that implies understanding and worry and sympathy, all of the things that, for a few months in a concrete cell in the Library’s holding, Alice thought she’d never get to have again. Because she made a bad call, in the one moment where it counted.

What they’re doing now isn’t a bad call. She’s turned it over in her head since her talk with Julia—whether she’s doing the right thing here in saving Quentin, who may not want to be saved at all. Whether it’s selfish, to want him back rather than to consider the possibility that’s not what _he_ would want. But she _has_ considered it. First, in nightmarish visions where his specter haunts her, no longer at rest and taking its revenge upon the guilty party. Then, with a more rational approach—not quite a bullet list, but close enough. Then, finally, somewhere in between; the thought of arriving in the Underworld and Quentin telling her, after everything, that he wants to stay.

Would she be able to let go?

She feels brittle at the thought and more than a little nauseous. Wishes she’d brought it up with Julia when she had the chance and talked it through, all of the contingencies and all of her fears, because she knows she can’t bring it up to Eliot and Margo without Eliot snapping at her for it and—fine, so maybe Julia has a point. Alice can be responsible for her own actions, analyze them by pulling at its threads until she reaches the wirework that drives her. She can’t do the same for Eliot when most of the time she can barely tell what he’s thinking, or how much of their grief stems from the same place.

She knows, without knowing the full story, that it’s not a friendship Eliot is mourning, here.

For a moment she allows herself to linger on that thought, and then she very carefully puts it back in its box, along with her fury when Quentin pulled her back from her niffin-state, Charlie’s cold blue eyes, and her father’s prone body. Lock and key. 

Quentin’s step faltering, glowing rain behind him. Lock and key.

She’s made her choice, now. She’ll live with it.

*

They prepare for their trip in silence. It isn’t a very comfortable or even companionable silence, more the absence of conversation simply because none of them seem to know what to say. Julia’s missing. Alice wasn’t really expecting differently, but it still doesn’t sit right with her, like a bad premonition.

At least Kady stays, sending emails to her hedge friends in the living room and pretending to be busy instead of simply waiting for Alice to leave, which fills Alice with an endless gratitude. Eliot, ready since ten minutes ago, sits on the couch, his hands fidgeting like they’re missing a cigarette. Then Margo emerges out of her bedroom to drop her leather satchel on the floor in front of Alice, and they all stare at each other.

“Let’s go,” Margo says.

Alice glances at Kady, who has closed her laptop. “Give me a minute?” she tells Margo and Eliot, and leads Kady out onto the balcony, where Alice casts a heating spell to shroud both of them from the January chills.

“You can still come, you know,” she says. “There’s no limit to the company. We can drop you off.”

Kady smiles. It’s a real, genuine smile, the one that’s rare from Kady, though not as rare as Alice once believed it to be. “Thanks, but no.” Alice wasn’t expecting any different. Still, she’d have liked Kady to be there, she thinks. “It took me a long time to figure it out,” Kady continues, “but I think—sometimes, it’s okay to let go. I don’t know. Something I’m figuring out, working with the hedges, and the Library, and with you, is that I’ve got everything I need right here.”

She looks—not quite happy, but settled, maybe. There’s a sureness to her that’s slowly replacing the anger, a strength that led hedges into an alliance and a Library into a revolution, and instead of envious, Alice finds she’s happy for her. The pure kind of happy, even as her heart breaks for what they’ve had to go through to arrive at this moment.

“I hope you find him,” Kady says. “I hope you bring him back. I mean that. Be careful out there, okay?” She clasps Alice’s shoulder, then seems to think better of it and pulls her in for a hug. Her untamed curls brush Alice’s cheeks where they’re wet with tears.

Outside, the snow has melted to puddles on the pavement, reflecting their figures as they hurry towards the lair of the Underworld dragon. The instructions came from Julia, or rather from the book that Julia handed over a few days ago, her face devoid of feeling. It’s an alleyway, because of course it is, with smoke blazing out of a manhole near an overflowing garbage bin.

Margo gingerly lifts her coat and crouches over it, reading the Ancient Greek lettering looped around the cover. “Jesus wept, what is that smell?” She holds out her hand, then throws the baby tooth handed to her by Alice between the grates.

They all have to step back as the cover is launched into the air as if by a geyser and hot, rotten air wafts their way. Over the edge is nothing but darkness.

“Well, as one exalted High King would say—” Eliot takes Margo’s hand and draws her nearer to the edge, “close your eyes and think of Fillory.” As one they step forward, into the hole, and disappear.

Alice makes herself take one last look at the alley. A rat scurries past, its pointed nose scanning the ground for food. At the last second, it looks up, staring at Alice with its beady black eyes. _Point of no return_ , it seems to say. “I know, buddy,” she says, and lets herself fall down, down, down.

*

Alice has read _The Hobbit_ and imagined plenty of dragon lairs as a kid, and she’s sorry to say the one they land in, cavernous as it may be, falls short. As they dust off their clothes they scan their surroundings, from the concrete floor to the treasures scattered around the space. There’s no gold here. No riches, or pearls, or mountains of coins you could slide down. On one large slab of stone, Alice spots a pair of glasses along with a dusty watch, the mechanism long since broken along with the glass cover. It’s pointless, cheap stuff.

Then again, what would a dragon need all that gold for, anyway?

“Hey,” Margo yells. The sound of her voice echoes back and again, which means these sewers must have walls even if they aren’t visible to their human eyes. “Miss Ancient One. We seek an audience.”

For a few seconds the cave is silent, and then, out of the darkness, two flames flicker to life. The eyes are followed by red scales, a long neck twisting forward like a snake slithering through the air, and then Alice is face to face with a real, breathing Ancient One.

It’s hard to read a dragon’s expression, but Alice thinks this one almost looks annoyed at the disturbance.

“What is it you want, little mortals?” Its—her?—voice is smooth, the carefully selected phonemes of a British news anchor.

Eliot is the first to step forward, head bowed, as Margo hangs back by Alice’s side. They haven’t worked out a plan for this bit, but if Eliot will take one for the team by bartering with the fire-breathing creature, Alice is happy to let him. “We seek passage to the Underworld,” he says, keeping his eyes slanted down in deference.

The dragon narrows her eyes. Maybe they’ve raised her suspicion. “Why would you wish to visit now, when all of the revelry is to be had up there?” she asks, though she leaves Eliot no time to answer. “Oh never mind. I don’t care. Your gift?”

That’s Alice’s cue. Out of her bag she gets the scroll, holding it high above her head and bowing her head slightly after Eliot’s example. “It’s an Elder Scroll. Written down in the age of heroes, when—”

“I know what it is,” the dragon cuts her off. “I have seven.”

That, they most definitely haven’t planned for. 

“But—it’s a rare manuscript,” Alice tries, drawing upon years of defending her research against exacting professors. “They say Hera herself kept it in her library.”

“How old do you think I am, human? I was alive long before Babylon fell. This piece of paper does not impress me.”

At a loss, Alice glances towards Eliot. He seems as confused as she is, the two of them speechless in front of this ancient creature. They’ve meticulously worked out every step along the way, and here they are. Step one, and they’ve already failed.

The head of the dragon snakes forward, hovering above them so that only the darkened scales of her throat are visible to Alice. The scales, like plates of armor, slot together every time she heaves a fiery breath. “However—that gem your companion is carrying. I would consider that a suitable gift in exchange for your passage.”

It takes Alice a second, and then the penny drops. “Jane’s stone,” she says, groaning to herself. Of course. She turns to watch Margo clasp her bag to her chest, looking for all the world like she’s ready to fight an army—or maybe one terrifying, massive dragon.

“Back off, lady. I don’t care what you’re the Queen of and for how long. I’m a High King, and I will gladly wear you as my new leather pumps if you don’t get your moldy breath _out of my face_.”

“Bambi,” Eliot placates. Or—no. Pleads. He retraces his steps to cover her hand in his, speaking to her gently. “We’ll return to Fillory. After. We’ll return and we’ll talk to Jane—”

In her hands, Alice still holds the now useless scroll as Margo asks, “What are you saying,” her eyes betraying that she full well knows the answer.

Eliot fixes her with a stare. “Margo, please.”

“No.”

“Hand over the stone,” Eliot says. It’s no longer a question.

Above them the dragon rolls her eyes, most likely tired of the puny humans’ tedious dance around what’s been inevitable since before they stepped through the manhole. “Make your choice, High King.”

Margo’s eyes are hard as flint as she lets Eliot take the stone from her satchel. She’s not looking at him, nor at Alice or the dragon, but someplace beyond them in the dark of the sewers.

“Twenty-four hours,” the dragon says, once Eliot has placed the stone next to a defunct music box with most of its paint flaked off, “that is all the time you get to return to the portal. If you’re late, you won’t be returning at all.”

A gust of air is expelled from her nostrils, not unlike the whinny of a horse. And then, in a cloud of tiny little embers and warm smoke that creep into Alice’s nose and lungs, she sends them out of the sewers—

—and into an elevator, which is all Alice has time to notice of their surroundings before Margo not-so-gently brushes past her and barrels into Eliot.

“What the fuck is wrong with you?” Her voice is uncharacteristically high, her cheeks flushed. Alice decides to stick to the corner Margo pushed her into. “We needed that stone! What the _fuck_ , El?” Her hands are clinging onto the lapels of Eliot’s coat, pulling at them as if she can shake sense into him, and with some embarrassment, Alice spies tears in Margo’s eyes. The display of weakness— her body’s betrayal—only seems to fan her fury.

Eliot for his part seems a little shocked, though he quickly turns his surprise into a gentle, coaxing tone Alice has heard him use with Margo on more than one occasion. “We’ll figure out another way,” he says.

“Fuck your other way,” Margo spits out.

“Bambi—”

“This was our one chance—no—” she shakes her head, correcting herself, “ _my_ one chance to save him.”

“Who? _Josh_?” Alice winces at the note of contempt in Eliot’s tone. The elevator seems to get smaller, even as it keeps sending them down, deeper and deeper. For a moment the fear overcomes Alice that they made the wrong deal and this is it—a never-ending elevator ride. Down, down, down.

Margo’s hands unclasp. Eliot overbalances and stumbles back. “Josh,” she repeats. “Fillory, my Kingdom, my crown, Fen, and _Josh_. Who is _fucking_ dead, not that you give a shit.”

“Of course I do,” Eliot says, wounded by the accusation, though Alice isn’t sure whether he believes it himself by the frown on his face. “Anyway,” he continues, in such an airy tone that Alice shrinks back just a little in advance, “it’s not like he’s dead-dead. Your boytoy is still out there somewhere. All we have to do is find a way to get him back.”

“You selfish dick. Can you for one second put yourself in my shoes?”

“Oh please,” Eliot says, now just as heated as her, “Don’t even—”

Margo doesn’t let him finish. “What, Eliot? Don’t even have feelings?” She laughs, a sharp, ugly sound. “Right, cause you’re the only one allowed to have those. You lost someone? I lost _everything_. Half of those things for you.”

“You’re gonna blame me for that? The fact that your life doesn’t mean anything if you’re not sitting on some throne, bossing people around and pretending that means they love you?”

The thing with having a friendship like Eliot and Margo’s, Alice muses, is that after all those years you know exactly which soft spots to aim for in order to make it hurt. Which arrows to twist, and which wounds to cover in salt.

Margo rears back as if slapped. She was vibrating with energy just a second ago, but now she’s eerily still, highlighting the discordantly cheery elevator music that’s been playing in the background.

“No wonder you can’t stop,” she says at last, quietly and evidently aiming to kill. “Because if you’d stop, you’d have to live with yourself.” She tilts her chin at the proud angle Alice imagines is her kingly bearing. “And who could put up with that?”

It’s at that moment the elevator grinds to a halt, and with a bright little pinging noise, the doors slide open.


	8. A Friend In Need

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Previous chapter: Alice, Eliot and Margo make a trade with the Underworld Dragon, and the conflict between Eliot and Margo comes to a head.
> 
> This chapter: The gang does what they came for.

Eliot, Alice and Margo spill out of the elevator into an empty hotel lobby. “Where is everyone?” Alice says. “There’s supposed be people here.”

But there isn’t a single soul aside from the three of them. Eliot glances at Margo. Her features are as tight as he’s ever seen them, the shutters drawn over her usually so expressive eyes. She’s wrapped her arms around her waist. On her face are no traces visible of her earlier tears, courtesy of her waterproof makeup.

Ironclad, impenetrable Margo.

“What does that mean?” Eliot says. He feels exhausted, like he’s trudged fifty miles through Fillorian woodland instead of taken a trip with an elevator. Just a minute ago he was furious, but the anger has left, swept along the current of Margo’s razor-sharp words, leaving in its wake only a biting guilt.

Alice’s sensible heels tap onto the laminate. “I don’t know.” A small frown mars her forehead. She doesn’t sound panicked—she wouldn’t dare to—but she doesn’t entirely manage to hide the tell of her pursed lips and quickened step. Her genius brain must be running a mile a minute.

They decide to explore the lobby and set themselves to the task with varying levels of commitment. Alice actually takes out a notebook to write down anything noteworthy, whatever that means, while Eliot and Margo flip through a few logbooks at the reception desk and check out leaflets near the waiting area, pretending to look interested. For the most part, they stick to different corners and don’t speak a word. Then, after twenty-six minutes—Eliot’s been counting—and an unsuccessful attempt to spell the computers to life, Alice sighs and says, “I think—maybe we should just try the ritual.”

Eliot drops the leaflet titled _Legal Assistance for Murder Victims._ Margo, who is checking the lounge area’s gossip magazines for clues, but mostly is just reading them, looks up. “Was that a question?”

“Do you have a better idea?” Alice snaps. 

“Well all right.” Margo rolls her eyes. “Don’t take it out on me.”

Alice seems a little taken aback at her own outburst. “I’m sorry,” she says, managing to sound genuinely penitent. “Let’s be real, we’re not going to find any answers here, so—let’s just do what we came here to do. We only have twenty-four hours.”

Twenty-three hours and thirty-three minutes, Eliot doesn’t say.

Preparing for the ritual should only take about forty minutes according to their calculations. They’ve detailed every single element of it, rehearsed the words and hand movements in the apartment like the lines of a play with a dedication he and Margo surely never showed at Brakebills. Eliot could do this ritual in his sleep. It’s like a well-oiled machine, the way Alice draws lines of chalk on the floor of the lobby and peppers them with hemlock seeds and crushed oleander flowers—creating three half-moons, connected by a circle. Meanwhile Eliot mixes graveyard soil, colloidal silver and dust from a middlemist red flower into a marble bowl and Margo softly chants a fusing spell for the ingredients.

Good thing they practiced this, because it’s clear they aren’t about to communicate now. Margo hasn’t looked at him once since they left the elevator. She’s furious and too proud to let it show in anything but defiant silence. She won’t apologize, not for this, too encased in hurt and convinced she’s right. And, well, isn’t she? Hadn’t she just said what he’s been telling himself all along but won’t admit out loud?

There’s self-flagellation and then there’s realism. Eliot has always excelled at the former, performing it with the style and grace he devotes to everything else, but he’s been studying the second.

_Who could put up with that?_

Not Margo, apparently.

They cover their wrists and hands in the gravelly clay. As soon as it hits his skin, Eliot feels the potency of the magic take hold. The mixture smells oddly soothing even though it shouldn’t, like one of those holistic crystal stores that sell herbal cancer remedies. They each take their place at the top of one of the half moons, while in the middle, at about two paces, the vial with Quentin’s blood rests on a bed of hemlock and oleander.

“Only one shot,” Alice says. A pointless repetition of something they all know, maybe just to remind herself. She sounds determined but nervous too, a combination that’s so particular to Alice that Eliot suddenly feels incredibly fond of her. No one else he’d rather have by his side in this than Alice—and Margo, even if she won’t look at him.

But she will. Once all of this is over. He’ll fix it, all of it—Fillory, Margo, Quentin—and it will have been worth it. The world will right itself again and return to spinning on its axis.

Eliot doesn’t feel nervous at all.

Alice starts chanting in Ugaritic with the ease of a fluent speaker, which she may as well be. As soon as she does, the smells intensify and a soft breeze picks up in their triangle, faintly disturbing the seeds and chalk on the ground. The magic taught at Brakebills was, with the exception of a couple of History courses, a more recent kind—the difference between Modern Greek and the extinct Ancient form. But the magic they’re channeling right now goes way back, closer to the source than anything Eliot’s every performed before. Many of the hand movements are unfamiliar, a language Eliot’s only ever read about, but that’s why they’ve practiced this. Together, they lift the blood out of its vial.

“Return which is lost,” Alice says in English, echoed by Eliot and Margo’s, “and make it found.” Ndubueze’s Tether. One of Alice’s additions, seeing as the ritual presumes the existence of a body. To resurrect, they need to find Quentin first.

They recite the words again, and then it’s as if they’re repeated to Eliot from inside his mind, without him opening his mouth at all. He wonders if the others can hear it—the steady hum, the murmur of voices. So many voices. But there’s no time to ask now.

As one, they step forward, interlinking their hands. Above them, the blood is spreading, dissipating as if being dissolved in water rather than air. Alice’s eyes are screwed shut, but Margo and Eliot’s aren’t, so they’re the only ones who notice when they’re joined by shadowy figures. The—spirits? Ghosts?—hover behind their shoulders. None of the literature they’d found said anything about this part, but the shadows don’t seem inclined to stop them. They’re only watching. Waiting.

The air tightens—there’s no other word for it. It constricts Eliot’s movements so he has to cast as if wading upstream and robs the breath from his throat. He has to struggle to get the words out. One of the shadow creatures brushes the back of his neck. For just a second, he falters. This is the presence of a power far, far beyond their control.

And yet, beyond the wind that’s now battering into them in an effort to wrest them apart, Eliot feels a flicker of familiarity. A warm glow on the other end of their call. Eliot knows it’s Quentin without visible proof, just by the way the magic shifts, slightly, towards a different frequency. A faint flicker, but—strengthening. They’re close.

The shadows are gone. They must be close. They must be—

—a shape appears in front of him. That’s all it is. A shape. Dark, foreboding. It has no discernible eyes, but Eliot can feel it watching.

His throat is constricting. Is it the shape? Squeezing, choking?

Further away now, the warm glowing light. Still within his grasp, though. If he could just—

—if he could—

*

He wakes with the copper tang of blood in his mouth and his heart in his throat. On the ground next to him, someone is making desperate retching noises—Alice, hunched over with her torn nails digging into the floor. She collapses with her forehead to the gray laminate.

“The spell—” he croaks. His voice is barely cooperating. She shakes her head, coughs once more.

He feels his heart sink, the reality of it settling low into the pit of his stomach even as his brain won’t accept it. They’d been close, he knows it. If it hadn’t been for that figure at the end—

It’s as if the creature’s grip on his throat never left. He can still feel it, crushing his windpipe. Right now, he can’t imagine that feeling ever leaving. Then he remembers—“Margo,” he calls out. He spots her as soon as he’s said her name, a few feet to his right. She’s slowly gaining consciousness, more gracefully than Alice and Eliot himself, though her face has a gray pallor to it and blood is dripping from her nose down her lips, leaving a red streak like a gash. She shies away when he tries to brush her hair back from her face.

“What was that,” she chokes out, wiping away the blood with the back of her hand. “That thing.”

Alice has crawled to her knees. She tries to stand, staggering towards the couch. “You got one too? The black—shadowy thing?”

Margo refuses Eliot’s help in getting up, so he heads for the water cooler instead, pouring three plastic cups. The water is tepid and chalky, but Eliot wouldn’t expect anything less from Purgatory.

“It didn’t want us to finish the spell,” Alice says, accepting the water gratefully. “We got too close. It was angry.” She brushes her hand along her throat like she can still feel the phantom touch. “We did everything right, and still—” There’s a barely contained resentment beneath her words, something petulant and righteous, but what really terrifies Eliot is the hint of defeat. It’s in her trembling fingers, clutching her cup and creasing the thin plastic. In her eyes that stare unseeing at what remains of the chalk half-moons.

This was their one shot.

The feeling hits him again, of a thin razor wire that has wrapped itself around his throat and is digging, slowly but surely, into his skin. It’ll smother him, he realizes, easy as that. More than a month, and none of the grief has abated. Isn’t it supposed to? More than a month, and the thought of Quentin—good memories or bad, what difference does it make?—feels like drowning. Last shot. They’ve got no bargaining chips left. The thought of the story ending here—of letting go, so close, so _fucking_ close—makes Eliot want to pull the damn razor wire himself.

“Face it,” he says, because he has to say something, because the silence is suddenly unbearable. “We fucked up.”

Alice doesn’t fight him on it, but Margo does. “Fuck that. I sure didn’t.” The blood is drying on her face, hair matted to her sweaty forehead. She looks, all in all, lovely. “All of that just to get here, and now you’re giving up?” She directs this last bit at Eliot in specific. “Of course you are. It’s what you’re best at.” She sounds like she means it, too, which is the worst part, probably. She means every word.

“Where are you going?” Alice asks when Margo gets up.

“We’re in the fucking Underworld. So we look, the old-fashioned way. Who’s gonna stop us?”

Those black clouds. Whatever lured them here, with convenient hints and vague notions of hope. The time limit of less than twenty-three hours imposed by the dragon. But Margo won’t hear any of that—it’s not her style, to submit to anything so prosaic and stifling as logic. Eliot wonders where she gets the energy from. Not just to fight, but to keep fighting when everything outside of you is screaming at you to stop.

She marches up the elevator, slamming the buttons. “You coming?” she asks Eliot and Alice, who share a look, then heave themselves off the couch to trail behind her for one more round of disillusionment.

The arrows above elevator light up as the doors slide open. But unlike the lobby, the elevator isn’t empty.

“Penny?” Alice asks, disbelieving, and then, when Penny directs a smile at her, launches herself into his arms. “Oh my God, _Penny_.”

He’s wearing an equally ill-fitting suit as when he was still a ghost haunting the Brakebills grounds, but something about him is different. Maybe it’s the expression on his face, like he’s no longer looking to fight the world and everything in it. Either way, he seems as happy to see Alice as she is him. Eliot didn’t even realize they were that close, one-night-stands excluded.

“Long time no see,” Penny finally says after he’s carefully released Alice. He goes to give Margo a hug as well, shorter but equally warm, then steps up to Eliot. “Dude, I died,” he says. “Bring it in.” He grabs Eliot by the shoulder and wraps his arms around him.

Alice, meanwhile, has regained some of her fire now that she’s found a friend and ally. “Why are you here?”

“We should talk,” Penny says. He’s still smiling, but it’s one of those commiserating smiles—a doctor about to deliver bad news. Alice seems to catch it as well, because her bright expression falters. Luckily, Eliot never bothered to raise his expectations again in the first place. “Come on. I’ll give you a tour.”

They take the same elevator down, then through a long hallway and into another elevator. Eliot wonders what the Library used to do before they invented these. Stairs? Not exactly accessible. No wonder they’d gotten a revolution on their hands. More hallways following the second elevator ride, these all bright lights and chrome and bare walls, so that the heels of their shoes echo behind them. It’s as if someone has taken an IKEA catalogue, stripped it of all its furniture, and layered it with a desaturation filter.

Penny’s office is probably the most welcoming space Eliot has seen so far, which isn’t saying much. But someone has evidently made an effort, with a pillowed couch that looks comfortable, a large plant in the corner and some abstract paintings on the wall. A therapist’s office, made to fade into the background. The entire Underworld Library feels like a cloudy day that won’t let up. Eternity in the wake before the storm.

“Sit, sit,” Penny says, pointing them towards the couch as if he’s heard Eliot’s thoughts and is desperate to prove him wrong. “Anyone want a drink? Coffee, tea?”

They politely decline. It’s strange; Eliot vividly remembers meeting Penny, who stood out even among the Brakebills crowd with his punk-rock- _bohémien_ vibe, and thinking— _stick to a theme, man_. Handsome but surly, already an outsider thanks to being a Traveler, he probably spent more time fucking Kady in barely private spaces than he did attending classes or socializing with other students. Which, abstractly, Eliot could at least appreciate. He didn’t _like_ Penny, but Penny seemed to like himself, and that Eliot could work with. This Penny? He doesn’t know who this is. Maybe death offered him perspective after all. Or maybe the job and private office did.

“Right, so.” Penny’s seated himself on a chair and now leans forward with his forearms on his knees, his hands clasped together. Eliot, Alice and Margo are packed like sardines onto the couch across from him. “I’ve got good news and bad news. Bad news—you can’t be doing this. Bringing people back. It’s against the rules.”

“You follow rules now?” Alice asks.

“I know it’s not what you want to hear. I’m sorry for that—”

“Are you?”

A small crack in Penny’s composure as he turns to glower at Eliot. “Look, good news? I can send you guys back, no consequences. No one’s gonna be holding you accountable.”

“That’s the good news?” Margo asks. “Nice pitch, but no thanks.”

“I’ve got orders. I’m doing the best I can.”

“Yeah, yeah. We’re all doing the best we can, here. Not good enough.”

“I’m just doing my job,” he says. He’s regained his placid attitude and sits, unmovable, with his ankle crossed over his leg. Having spent a couple of weeks living with Penny23, Eliot got the sense replacement Penny was a bit of a pale imitation, but as it turns out, a year in the Underworld has robbed their Penny of his personality too. If there ever was proof for the corporate world sucking the life out of you, this is it.

Eliot tries not to feel hopeless at his bland smile, or terrified at the thought that this is simply what becomes of a person after death. He settles for the easy, familiar fire of resentment.

“You saw him,” Alice says. She says it quietly, but it effectively gets Penny’s attention. “You saw Quentin, didn’t you? I noticed the _Secrets Taken To The Grave_ sign outside.”

Penny’s expression turns kind and empathic again. Alice seems to bring it out in him. “He’s fine, if that’s what you’re worried about.”

Alice ignores him. “What’s going on down here? It’s a mess on Earth. Kady and I,”—a frown passes over Penny’s face before he smooths it again—“we’ve been doing the best we can, but we haven’t been able to reach the Underworld at all.”

“Temporary hitch. We’re working on it.”

“Cut the crap, Penny. We could be working together. We should be.”

“I can’t.” He sounds genuinely regretful this time. “There’s a bigger picture to this, bigger than any of you could imagine. I need you to go home.”

Something like betrayal flickers behind Alice’s eyes. “What happened to you? You used to care about people. Not just the bigger picture.”

“You guys are even more of a pain in the ass than Coldwater was, you know that?”

He’d gathered as much from Alice’s words, but the thought of Quentin sitting in this office, baring his soul in order to move on, fills Eliot with a cold, numbing dread. And Penny let it happen. No, not just that. He enabled it. What bullshit this entire thing is.

“The Penny I knew? He wouldn’t just blindly follow orders,” Alice says, as if she’s read Eliot’s thoughts. “If we can’t be here, then what was up with the book? Or—or the cards?”

“Cards?” Penny looks confused.

“The—you don’t know.” Alice gets a look in her eyes like she’s just figured out a particularly complex and crucial theorem. “So it’s true, you _are_ just following orders. Do you even know who you’re taking them from?”

“Of course I do.”

She shakes her head. “No, you don’t. Not really.” Eliot’s forgotten how it feels, to be on Alice’s side when she knows she’s right and will stop at nothing to prove it. “Maybe we’re not supposed to be here. Maybe it is hopeless. But I’d rather be wrong than be a pawn.”

Eliot can see the crack she’s made in Penny’s armor as he takes her in. It feels like minutes pass, though in reality it’s probably more like seconds and it’s only the Underworld which stretches the time like taffy. Then he shakes his head, somehow irritated and fond at the same time. “You people are gonna be the death of me. Again. Tell me about these cards,” he says.


	9. Fifty Years

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Previous chapter: After their attempt at resurrecting Quentin fails, Alice, Eliot and Margo encounter Penny, who tries to send them back to Earth. Instead, Alice manages to convince him to investigate the signs they've been receiving. 
> 
> This chapter: Alice and Eliot are forced to spend some time together.

Alice is talking a big game, trying to convince Penny he’s being played like a puppet by forces neither of them can fully see the shape of. She believes it, though. There’s something, here, in the murky depths between her ignorance and his. But the truth, what she isn’t saying, is that Penny alarms her. His insistence that death truly is a one-way ticket, his confirmation that there is something bigger at work, and his serene, remote display of omniscience. The latter maybe the most of all, because it shows her a vision of the future she fears. Alice, locked in her office, hair thin and gray. Long since cut off from humanity and all its beauty and despair.

At least whatever she’s said seems to be working its magic on Penny. “If you promise to stay here,” he says, looking at each of them in turn, “I’ll go talk to some people.”

Eliot mockingly copies Penny’s own smile. “We’ll be good boys and girls.”

It’s clear Penny doesn’t buy a word of it, but he doesn’t have to as long as he actually listened to her. There’s another door on the other side of his office, next to a bookcase. He walks towards it. “I don’t know how long I’ll be gone. Through here are my personal quarters. Take a beat, okay? Rest. Don’t make yourselves at home and don’t touch anything you don’t have to touch.” He straightens his jacket and tie—a corporate man walking into battle. Before he leaves them in his office, he turns to them one last time.

“I see a lot, down here. There’s limits to how much I can interfere, but—if you guys are—were—my friends? Listen to me. There’s a difference between giving up, and learning to let go. Think about that, before you storm out of here to overthrow whoever it is you’re planning to overthrow.”

Alice can hear him lock the door from the outside.

“How is he more of a dickhole now than when he was alive?” Margo says, loud enough that Penny must still be able to hear it.

“At least at Brakebills he owned it.” Alice lets her head fall back against the back of the sofa, and very carefully doesn’t think about Quentin occupying the same seat. Talking about—everything. Secrets. Whatever those might’ve been.

“Well, if we’re gonna be stuck in this minimalist hellhole, I’m washing this blood off my face.” Margo gets up. Eliot tries to follow her, but she pulls her arm free from his grasp and closes the door to the en-suite in his face. That one has a lock too, by the sound of it. He stands in front of it for a moment, and Alice has to quickly pretend she wasn’t watching him when he eventually turns back.

Eliot’s restlessness as he circles the office for something to occupy his attentions at least gives Alice something to look at in turn. On Penny’s desk sits a tiny snow globe—one of the only elements in the room that shows a little personality. Eliot picks it up. He shakes it a few times to watch the snow drift past the snowman inside, then puts it back and at the last moment, twists his hand. The globe goes toppling off the desk, shattering onto the floor in a shower of glass and white flakes. “Oops,” Eliot says, not even pretending to look the least bit surprised.

Alice rolls her eyes. She gets up to move closer and executes a quick fixing spell so the snow globe floats back onto the desk. There’s a tiny chip missing off the snowman’s carrot nose, she notices. When she lifts her feet, she spies it beneath the toe of her shoe.

“That was Quentin’s discipline, you know?” she says, because probably no one took the time to tell Eliot about their trip to Brakebills South. “Repair of small objects.” She smiles at the memory. “He seemed so disappointed, like he thought it would be transfiguration, or something. Anyway, I—I thought it was fitting. Right?”

Eliot is staring at her like she just told him David Bowie died. She feels her smile wither on her face. “Sorry,” she says, not entirely sure what she’s apologizing for.

The silence that follows is awkward, too close to something unnameable. She’s desperately searching for a subject that has nothing to do with any of this when he says, “Was he—do you think he was happy?”

“When he died?”

“Before, I mean.”

Alice doesn’t know what it is he wants to hear, so she picks the truth. “I don’t know. I think—he was trying to be.” He looked almost happy, when they sat on the stairs at the Cottage and talked about working together. _Being_ together. She doesn’t mention that part. “But I don’t think he’d been happy for a while. It was a lot, you know. Just—a lot going on.” The memory of Quentin’s step, halting as the mirror shattered behind him. She doesn’t mention that either. Eliot nods, a carefully controlled jerking motion, and she adds, “He missed you.”

He turns his face towards the wall, away from her. She’s so far out of her depth, here. Like she’s walking on eggshells, and she’s never been good at being careful with other people’s emotions. Too prickly, her mother would say. Too self-absorbed.

Well, sue her, she’s trying. No one’s ever walked on eggshells with her. No one except for Quentin.

She doesn’t know what makes her say it, except that on some level she’s been itching to ask ever since that moment, and she’s so damn tired of _other people’s emotions_. She can barely manage her own, how the hell is she supposed to manage Eliot’s? “That day at the park,” she starts, knowing she’s got his attention from the way he stills. “When you broke through. What were you talking about?”

He stubbornly keeps his shoulder turned to her. Like _she_ wants to be here? She can feel irritation brewing and swallows it down. “Eliot,” she says. “Fifty years—what? What did you mean?”

“You don’t even know what you’re asking.”

_That’s the fucking point_ , she wants to yell, and says “He was my boyfriend,” instead, which probably isn’t much better. It makes her sound defensive, she realizes.

He’s leaning against the desk, watching her. Weighing her. They’d been friends, once upon a time, but here and now, in Penny’s office, that feels lifetimes away. And yet. The distant silence isn’t him trying to be difficult, she doesn’t think, but Eliot’s own way of caring. He’s right—she doesn’t know what she’s asking.

And then, haltingly, Eliot starts speaking.

“The third key—the time key. Q and I went to Fillory to get it, except it wasn’t our Fillory, but Fillory in the past. It was—honestly a stupidly vague quest. We had to solve a mosaic, show the—the _beauty of all life._ ”

Alice only distantly remembers reading about the third quest in the _The Tale of the Seven Keys_ , and Eliot’s account, these sentence fragments delivered in stops and starts, is barely enough to make up a story. She tries to piece it all together. “But you did get the key,” she says. She remembers examining it at Brakebills, when Quentin still allowed her to participate in his big hero quest. She remembers melting it in Blackspire, along with the six others.

“It wasn’t really about solving the mosaic, in the end.” Eliot’s words flow more smoothly now, as if all he needed was the go-ahead. “He could probably explain the—symbolic meaning of it. The literary themes of the hero’s journey. Whatever. I think the quest just wanted us to live out our lives there. Fifty years of dedicating ourselves to solving an unsolvable puzzle.” He pauses to glance at her, gauging her reaction. She doesn’t know what it is he finds on her face, but he says, “He got married. Had a son. I sort of missed the ending there due to being dead, but he ended up handing the key to Jane, she gave it to Margo, and Margo stopped us from going to Fillory in the first place. Time loop prevented. The end.”

He finishes the story with a wrist flourish—all’s well that ends well—while Alice tries to make sense of the winding maze of time magic required for all of this. It doesn’t really make any sense, the way Eliot’s telling it. “So it never happened?” she asks, suppressing the urge to ask him to draw her a diagram. Eliot gets that look in his eyes again, like she isn’t as smart as she thinks she is. “What?”

“I don’t know if it did or didn’t. I just know we remembered it, by whatever ridiculous quest-magic fuckery.”

“Remembered what?”

“All of it,” Eliot says. He seems almost apologetic, but there’s an edge to it Alice is pretty sure she isn’t imagining. Something like vindication.

“All of—” Fifty years. Her brain doesn’t quite want to process the number. She wills it cooperate, get on board. Compartmentalize. She must look like an idiot, staring at Eliot with her lips slightly parted. “He got married?”

“Her name was Arielle. She—she died. Too young. Teddy was only four. It was—honestly, it was touch-and-go for a while.” Whether it happened or not—which still remains unclear to Alice—Eliot sure talks about it like it did. Like it wasn’t some pocket dimension that got erased in the end, but a real, tangible past. One he shared with Quentin.

Quentin, who had been married. Alice tries to reconcile that information with the Quentin she knows and comes up short. Fifty years. Her father barely reached fifty-five. She wanted to know, and now she feels dizzy with the knowledge. 

There’s blanks, still, in the story, between the fragments of Eliot’s clumsy rendition. What is he sparing her for, anyway? Why the act of reluctance? He’s dying to tell, fuck him, and she knows— _knows_ —the answer to this, but she has to ask. “Were you and he—?”

His prolonged silence is as much of a _yes_ as she’s getting. Fifty years. “I don’t understand,” she says. “You remembered and you just—what, pretended it didn’t happen?”

Eliot inclines his head, like she’s a wounded bird he’s found outside in the garden, its wings clipped by his cat. “Give me a fucking break, Eliot,” she says. So much for swallowing that irritation.

“Fine,” he says, raising his voice as well. Alice spares a thought for Margo, still in the en-suite, though maybe this will make her stay there. “You want to know? Fine. He asked. After we remembered. Fifty years of living together, raising a _child_ together—and he wanted to do it again. He said we had _proof of concept_ , like it’s that simple, like there wasn’t—quests, and life, and _you.”_

Alice once again is forced to read between the lines. “You said no. Why?”

It’s a genuine question. There’s little doubt in Alice’s mind that Eliot was—is—in love with Quentin, because it’s familiar, like looking into a mirror. She hasn’t yet decided whether she likes what she sees when Eliot laughs, lost in his own unspoken joke. “You know,” he says, “I’ve got no fucking idea.”

It’s as if they both run out of words, then. Alice has no questions left, and Eliot no longer seems willing to provide answers, only surveys her like any moment she’ll snap at him again.

She isn’t. She won’t. It’s not him she’s angry with, anyway, but where else is she supposed to direct the torrent of conflicting emotions beneath her breastbone? Surely not at Quentin, who isn’t even here to gaze at her with wide eyes and an apology on his lips. He won’t even give her the courtesy of letting her be angry with him for neglecting to mention any of this, because he had to go and die on her.

So what is she supposed to do with all of it, then? Where is she supposed to put it? _Take it back_ , she wants to tell Eliot. _I don’t want it_. But it’s her own fault, for always having to know.

She realizes she’s still standing in the middle of Penny’s office and goes to sit on the couch instead, where at least she can wrap her arms around herself and look vaguely put together, even if she isn’t fooling anyone currently present. Her brain, which hasn’t complied since she let herself ask the question, is spinning its wheels.

Eliot had rejected Quentin, and Quentin—Quentin had stumbled back into her arms. While Eliot was possessed.

_Oh_ , she thinks.

She feels Eliot’s hand land on her shoulder. “Please,” he says, when she tries to brush him off. He takes her hand instead and sits down next to her. “I can’t fight with another person today, so can we just—”

All Alice can think is that she wishes Kady were here, instead. It’s not fair to Eliot, probably. It’s not fair how the current avalanche of her thoughts cascades into the memory of a morning at Brakebills—Quentin, Eliot and Margo curled together in the light of the rising sun. He’d broken them up once, and even that wasn’t enough, apparently.

Alice’s conscience swells with guilt for even thinking the thought.

“Does your brain have an off-switch?” Eliot asks.

Alice sighs. “Not really.”

Fifty years. She’s made a tally of her relationship with Quentin before and come up with three months, two weeks and five days.

Eliot’s hand is rubbing steady circles into her upper arm. It’s very nearly soothing. Every time she’s seen him since Quentin died, he’s been one carefully selected word away from falling apart—it figures that he’d choose this moment to be the bigger person.

Alice closes her eyes, and tries to think of nothing at all.

*

It takes Penny nine hours to return, by which time Alice feels she’ll go stir-crazy if she has to spend one more minute locked in a room with Eliot and Margo pointedly ignoring each other, or with Eliot period. After all that, she’s so stupidly happy to see Penny that she nearly hugs him again.

He narrows his eyes at them and the way they’re all occupying different corners of the same space, then shakes his head, just like he’s done a million times before when he desperately wants to convey how little he cares about their irrelevant interpersonal drama. Clearly, over the longest nine hours of Alice’s life, something has changed in Penny too. He picks the couch to sit down, next to Alice.

“If you say ‘I told you so’, I’m kicking you out,” he says. She smiles despite herself. “I’m gonna try and keep it short. Don’t interrupt me.” He directs the last bit mostly at Eliot and Margo, who stand like stony gargoyles with their arms crossed.

“Okay, so. You know how the Monster’s sister killed Persephone?” Alice hadn’t known that, but it doesn’t seem like Penny is expecting an answer. “Yeah, Hades didn’t take it well. The one death the god of the Underworld can’t control. He got a little—crazy. Went completely AWOL, which is why they got me to greet the newest arrivals to the Underworld here. Back to manual labor. But then, more recently, Hades started sending all of the souls still waiting for their transfer back up there, causing the mess you all got to witness first-hand. Now, we’ve been trying to fix that.”

“Who’s we?” Margo says, ignoring Penny’s earlier stipulations.

“The people I work for—they’re not villains, you have to understand. They’re called the Fates. Parcae, Norns, Purysho, whatever you want to call them. They keep everything in balance. And when someone tries to break that—”

“They’re the ones who tried to stop the ritual,” Alice finishes. Of course. It makes sense, as much as anything in their lives does.

“Yeah. Look, I didn’t know Hades was trying to reach you guys. And I don’t know why. But—he helped me once. Made me see, when I was lost. I figure I owe him one. So you and I are gonna pay him a visit and we’re gonna figure out what’s going on here.”

The reality of their situation paints itself in vivid detail. They’ve battled gods and ruled kingdoms, but even then Alice knows going up against the Fates themselves is another level. Is it even possible, to cheat something so inevitable as destiny? Is that what they were doing, when she saved Quentin from the death that was foretold in his book, only to lose him after all not even a month later? “You can find Hades?” Alice asks.

“That’s what took the longest but—yeah. I know where to find him.” Penny looks around the room, then says. “I’m not making any promises. There’s a reason they’re called the Fates.”

Margo is already at the door, tapping her foot against the floor. “Fate can kiss my ass. Now get moving.”

Alice thinks of Julia and Eliot, both so sure of their own position, and envies them their conviction. Ever since that sliver of doubt wormed itself beneath her skin, it hasn’t left, and none of this is doing anything to change that. There’s a legion of Alices waging war in her head—the Alice who tried to save Charlie and failed; the Alice who figured out how to release the Plover estate ghosts from their loop; the Alice who felt such pure wrongness after being brought back herself, as if she was suddenly part of a world she thought she’d left behind and now no longer belonged to. All of them clamoring for attention while the rational side of her—the Alice who swore she would never again make the mistake she did when she melted the keys at Blackspire—is screaming at her to listen to Julia and Penny and turn back now that the option still exists.

And yet the loss of Quentin remains like an ache, pulling her forward to follow Penny out of the door. It’s the Alice who fell in love with an odd, lonely boy and who, in loving the man he became, finally found a way to love herself. They’re so close, now. 

_What if_ , she thinks. _What if?_


	10. Ethics 101

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Previous chapter: Eliot tells Alice about the mosaic quest. Penny gathers information, and relays everything to Alice, Eliot and Margo, after which they decide to set out to find Hades. 
> 
> This chapter: Hades monologues.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Apologies for the delay in posting! Quick shoutout to everyone who's been leaving comments and kudos--and everyone who's been reading along. I appreciate all of you. <3

This time, they don’t take the elevator. Instead Penny takes them along the scenic route, which Eliot would appreciate under literally any other circumstances, but he’s getting a little impatient, what with all the seesawing between hope and despair. Margo still isn’t speaking to him. Neither is Alice, for that matter, though that one really isn’t his fault and he won’t claim credit for it. Quentin can navigate that particular minefield once he gets back.

Apparently there’s an entire world outside of the hotel lobby and office buildings—one with sprawling lakes and rolling hills, kind of like what Eliot imagines Scotland looks like. Dreary weather included, though somehow the rain diverts when it reaches them and streams in rivulets along a protective ward a few inches from their bodies so that they remain dry. Is the geographical environment of the Underworld common knowledge? No one else looks surprised, though maybe they’re all running out of emotional capacity for that.

It turns out to be a long hike. Courtesy of Alice’s magical remedies Eliot’s wound no longer aches like it did a few weeks ago, but he’s never been a physical exercise person and the terrain is treacherous and uneven, no path in sight. Eliot is grateful for his cane as he watches Alice stumble and right herself more than once.

They round a lake, cross a forest that looks exactly like Fillory—though admittedly all woods look alike to Eliot—and wind up in a valley. It must be beautiful, in spring when the sun is beating down on the land and the ground is covered in fresh, green grass and wildflowers, but right now, with the light blocked by furiously dark clouds and rain pouring down, it just looks depressing. Though perhaps this is what the scenery always looks like, here in the Underworld. It’s not what Eliot would pick for his mad grief spiral, but it’s dramatic, he’ll give the guy that much. In the middle of the valley, fittingly, stands a ruin of a castle. Theatrically high towers in dark stone reach for the sky and most of the rubble they can see is overgrown with moss, claimed by nature after humans abandoned it.

“It’s a little— _Mysteries of Udolpho_ ,” Alice says with a judgy look, as if any of them know what that means.

Margo, who is trying to clean mud off her shoes by rubbing them against a moss-covered stone, rolls her eyes. “The guy who runs the Underworld is a melodramatic bitch. Shocker.”

Penny looks like he regrets every life choice he made that got him to this moment. “Please don’t repeat any of that when we meet him.”

They enter through what must at one point have been the entrance gates but now is merely a slightly bigger gap in the stone rampart. Inside, rainwater drips along the walls and wind whistles through cracks in the masonry, creating a full surround-sound horror movie, as if Count Dracula might appear at any moment.

And then, once they’ve reached the central hall where once upon a time the lords and ladies of the castle must have held the most magnificent balls, it all seems to stop. The rain and clouds clear. Ivy and colorful flowers trail along the ground, up to a throne on which a handsome man sits in a dark suit, his pose welcoming like he’s been waiting for them.

“So good to finally see you,” Hades says, because of course he has.

They all pause, unsure of how to proceed. “Oh, no, please. Come. I’m being a terrible host.” He claps his hands together once, and cushioned chairs appear, pulled straight out of a Victorian interior, along with a table full of delicacies.

“Don’t eat that,” Penny murmurs before they approach, like none of them have ever heard of mythology before. They spread out onto the seats.

From up close, Hades’ poised appearance shows cracks—his silk tie’s balthus knot is coming undone and his white shirt is creased at the collar. But his dark eyes are sharp as he fixes them on his four guests over his steepled hands. “I’ve been looking forward to meeting you, or, in some cases, to see you again.” He smiles, not unkindly. “The Emperor, the Hanged Man, the Lovers. Fascinating stories.”

“Tarot cards, really?” Margo says, with her stunning diplomatic insight. “I didn’t come here to get my future read by some mentalist hack.” Eliot can see Penny rubbing his forehead to stave off a headache, but Hades only laughs.

“Of course you didn’t. Margo Pluchinsky. The High King, still playing second fiddle.” Eliot’s never heard anyone refer to Margo by her father’s name. It’s meant to throw her off, and, looking at Margo, it hits the mark. “You’re wondering why you even came here, when none of it seems to be about you.”

“Cute trick,” Margo says, but Eliot can tell Hades has rattled her.

Hades raises his hands in an apology. “Please, I don’t mean to offend. In fact, I think we can help each other. We’ve both had things taken from us after all. I assume Penny has informed you about the Fates?” He doesn’t wait for a reply. “You see, I’ve always been an admirer of their work. We’re colleagues, I suppose you could call us. They cut the cords, I send ‘em on—keeps us both in business. As such, I thought we had an understanding.”

“You thought you were exempt,” Alice says. “That they wouldn’t one day come after you.”

“It sounds a bit presumptuous, when you put it like that. That slippery hubris will get to you every time. But you see, us gods, we’re not supposed to die.” The calm and collected front once more reveals itself to be just that—a front—when Hades has to pause to clear his throat. “If we were, I would’ve planned for it. But my wife, she wasn’t done. _I_ wasn’t done. It just doesn’t seem fair, does it?” He gets up to pace the hall, projecting his voice as if he’s giving a TED Talk. “She and I used to come here often, a couple of centuries after we got married, when we were still in the honeymoon period. It’s an exact copy of a castle on Earth. I created it like this so that, whenever she missed her home, she’d have a piece of it down here. Some of my happiest moments were spent in this place, with her. And they took that from me. Doesn’t it just make you _furious_?”

“It does,” Eliot says. He’s surprised he’s spoken, but there’s something enthralling about Hades. He wonders if it’s an enchantment or if he’s simply a gifted orator.

“It does,” Hades repeats, pleased at his captive audience. “They choose who lives or dies. By what authority? On what grounds do _they_ get to pass judgment without us getting any say in it? And we all just accept it. Do you know how many people have knocked at my door over the years to question Death? Seven. Seven measly humans who decided they weren’t just going to roll over and let Fate take their loved ones from them. All you needed was a nudge.”

“Hold on—” Alice says, a faint frown on her face. “You said we could help each other. I don’t understand how.”

If Hades is bothered by the interruption of his monologue, he doesn’t show it. “Yes, I did. After my wife died, I started to wonder—what would happen if you stopped following? If a couple of brave people decided that Fate and Destiny were merely a sham and said— _I refuse_.”

“You’re talking revolution,” Penny says. “How?”

“Well, first of all, I bring your friend back.”

The tiny beating ember of hope in Eliot’s chest flares to life. “That’s it?” Alice asks. “It’s that simple?”

“Why wouldn’t it be?” Hades says. “I can do it right now, with a snap of my fingers.”

“Then—why the secrecy? Why make us come all the way here?”

Deep down, Eliot knows she’s right. It’s too simple, too straight-forward. He’s not even asking them to sing in order to prove their love or whatever the fuck the stories claim a resurrection requires. But—Eliot would sing. He’d sing the whole damn Queen catalogue if it meant getting Q back. “Alice,” he says, aiming for the tone of voice a sane and logical person would use in this situation. “This is what we came for. Why are we arguing?”

Alice wavers. “I know, it just—it doesn’t make sense.”

“So what?”

“So—so we don’t know what the Fates will do to us!” She looks at Penny for support, who shrugs.

“I’m sure they’ll be pissed.”

Alice turns back to Eliot like she’s won the argument, which just tells him she hasn’t been in enough arguments with him. “So we’ll all just follow orders now? Think about _the bigger picture_?”

“No! No—I don’t know. I don’t have any answers, I’m just saying—we’re setting a precedent here.” She gets up and smooths down her skirt as if readying herself for a classroom debate. “You read _A Guidebook to Ethical Necromancy_ , right? It wasn’t just about getting the ritual right so a person doesn’t accidentally return without their shade. It was about—the implications of reversing death in the first place. If one person does it, does everyone just get to decide when to bring someone back to life?”

“You can’t be serious with this right now.” Fucking philosophy majors. She and Quentin must’ve had endless insufferable conversations like this. “I’m not getting into this with you.”

“Because I’m right,” she says. “And you know it.”

“I’m sorry, is this your final for Ethics and Society 101 or are we talking about saving Quentin? You could’ve brought this up at literally any point during any of this. Too fucking late.”

Alice looks back at Penny, who shakes his head. “Don’t look at me, c’mon. I don’t know.”

In the meantime, Hades has returned to his throne and is perched on top of it, watching the hurtling landslide he’s set in motion. Alice closes her eyes and sighs. “What if—” She halts, paces a few steps, then returns. Her sensible heels trample over the flowers, though new ones bloom with each cracked stem. It reminds Eliot of Jane’s Clock Barrens—a place outside of time, with no regard for the rules of mortality. “What if we aren’t doing the right thing here, Eliot? What if—”

“Jesus Christ. Spit it out.”

“What if he doesn’t want to come back? What if _that’s_ why they’re trying to stop us?”

It takes Eliot a second to catch her meaning. “I’m sorry—what?”

Alice grimaces as if she regrets bringing it up, but she doesn’t back down. “You weren’t there, Eliot. I’d never seen him like that.” Eliot has some idea, from watching Quentin’s desperation in the wake of Alice’s death, and his despondency after Arielle died, of how low Q’s lows run. But no one has bothered to tell him about this time around.

“In the Mirror Realm. There was a—a moment where he—” Alice exhales like she’s performing a 4-7-8 breathing exercise. “He stopped running. Maybe. It went too quickly and—and it isn’t like dressing it up as a heroic sacrifice would be any better just because he wanted to be the hero so badly he was happy to die in the process—” She runs out of steam at the end and returns to measured breathing. In and out.

Funny, because Eliot feels like all air has just been stolen from his lungs. “What the fuck.” Alice winces. “No, seriously, what the _fuck_. When were you going to mention this?”

“I don’t know!” Alice cries. “I talked to Julia and—”

“Julia.” Of fucking course.

“Well she wasn’t wrong. We just—did this without thinking about it because—because we were upset. But it’s not that easy. And if you would just _listen_ to what I’m saying—”

“No, excuse me, I’m still stuck on the fact that you neglected to mention that Quentin might have committed fucking suicide.”

She recoils a little, like it’s the word she takes offense at rather than, oh, everything she just told him. Eliot’s been balancing the edge of this cliff for too long, every setback pushing him a little further out of balance. This isn’t a setback. This is the whole damn cliff crumbling into the waves.

“Well,” Alice says, blinking quickly behind her glasses in an attempt to hide her tears. “I’m not the only one keeping things from others here, so.”

The sound of Penny clearing his throat pierces Hades’ hall. In the heat of the moment, Eliot almost forgot they’re not alone. “I’m glad to see you guys learned to communicate in the time I was gone,” Penny says, his eyebrows raised.

“Unless you’ve got something useful to contribute—” Eliot starts, before realizing that— “you talked to him. After he died. Why aren’t you contributing?”

Penny’s expression is somewhere between his dour Brakebills persona and the enlightened Underworld therapist. “No can do, man. I’ve got patient confidentiality.”

Alice clicks her tongue. “Come on.”

“Look, it’s Coldwater,” Penny says. “You know him. There was a lot of hemming and hawing, that’s all I can say. I’m already putting my ass on the line for you guys here.”

Alice is trying very hard to catch Eliot’s eye as he attempts to channel the anger he felt earlier. He comes up empty. She looks so miserable, and he knows she’s trying. They’re all trying so fucking hard.

“If that’s the problem,” Hades says, “then why don’t we ask Mr. Coldwater himself? All I need is one word and—” He snaps his fingers.

“He’s the god of the Underworld,” Alice says, once again making her appeal to Eliot. “He’s manipulating us.”

Hades, unperturbed, leans back and interlaces his fingers. There’s no doubt in Eliot’s mind that he’s speaking the truth about this, at least. One word, and Quentin could be here. “Of course he’s manipulating us,” he says. “It’s not like he’s being subtle. But so what?” He tries to come up with arguments to convince her, but he doesn’t get much further than the baseline. They’d get Quentin back. “Whatever happens, we’ll figure it out then. We always do.”

“No, we don’t,” Alice says.

A small tropical bird has hopped onto Hades’ throne, and for a few moments its call is the only sound in the quiet stalemate. Then Margo gets up. She hasn’t said a word since Hades addressed her, Eliot realizes. Even in her dark green coat with her hair coming undone, she looks nothing less than regal.

“Do it,” she says. “If you two won’t, then fine, I’ll make the call. Or does it not count when I say it?” She ignores the stares and Alice’s sounds of protest in favor of walking up to Hades’ throne. “Bring him back.”

Hades smiles. “As you command, you Highness,” he says, and snaps his fingers.


	11. Prime Fucking Directive

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Previous chapter: Eliot and Alice argue some more, and Margo makes the call to bring Quentin back. Hades schemes. 
> 
> This chapter: The long-awaited return.

For what it’s worth, Hades has so far kept his word. In a bright blue patch of flowers, looking lost and confused and so, so real, stands—no doubt about it—Quentin. He looks good, miles better than he did before he died, in a crisp off-white shirt that Alice isn’t sure he’d ever wear while alive on Earth, and with the warm flush of someone who’s been eating and sleeping like a functioning human being. Alice has seen dead people before. Part of her expected the sickly pallor of a bone-white corpse, but Quentin looks healthy and handsome, and Alice feels her heart break cleanly in two.

She can tell the exact moment he spots them, because his expression shifts from faint curiosity at his new surroundings to pure awe.

It’s been over a month since she came across _A Guidebook to Ethical Necromancy_ at the Library—a month that at times felt like years. Alice has elaborate notes on every step along the way. How is it possible that at no point she prepared for what she would do or say when the moment arrived? Perhaps she hadn’t dared to let herself hope. Perhaps a cynic caution has held her back from imagining this, and even now it won’t allow her heart to soar as it should. She wants to pull Quentin in and never let go. Punch him, then break down in his arms. She realizes—she wouldn’t have wrestled her way into the Underworld for anyone but him.

In her hesitation, Eliot has approached Quentin with two long strides, wrapping him up in his arms like he’s the only lifeline in miles and miles of ocean. Quentin is corporeal, then, not a ghost, not a memory, not an idle illusion. Nothing like the books she’s studied about meeting lost souls in the Underworld, where one reaches out and only brushes cold air. All of the theorists were wrong, Alice thinks, a little hysterically.

Then Quentin looks up from Eliot’s shoulder to fix his eyes on her. “Vix,” he says, quietly awestruck. The use of the endearment weakens her knees and crumbles her walls of caution, making hope escape like a helium balloon. She doesn’t know which of them moves first, but they stumble across the hall and fall into each other’s arms, and as she fists her hands into the crisp material of his shirt and presses her forehead into the crease between his neck and shoulder, she notes with a little thrill that Quentin isn’t just corporeal—he’s _real_. Smelling like a hot summer’s day, his embrace just a little too fierce to be comfortable. She imagines hers is much the same. It’s like coming up for air after months of trying to breathe underwater.

When he eventually leans back a little to wipe tears from her cheeks, she realizes she’s not just crying but sobbing, the kind that’s wrenched from her lungs. His face does that thing where it seems to collapse in on itself, like she’s the one who broke his heart, and not the other way around. “Vix. Hey.”

“You idiot,” she chokes out at the gentleness of his tone, and kisses him. It’s a little wet, thanks to her tears, but it’s also just Quentin, which makes it better than most kisses she’s had.

She has to let him go. She isn’t sure how long they’ve been standing here, but there are others in the hall, she realizes as she pries her fingers loose with reluctance. It hurts to watch him walk away, even if it’s only a few feet to hug Margo, who slaps his cheek none too gently and then presses a kiss against the reddened skin. Even Penny gets a nod and a smile, which is more than Alice would have expected.

“This is—nice, don’t get me wrong,” Quentin says. Still confused, a little disoriented. Out of everyone in the hall, he’s the only one who didn’t spend weeks leading up to this moment. “But could someone catch me up?” His gaze cuts to Hades, whose eyes are lit up with satisfaction.

“It’s a rescue mission,” Margo says. “We’re here to Orpheus-and-Eurydice you out of the Underworld. Thank us later.”

Alice doesn’t know how to interpret the look that crosses Quentin’s face. There’s surprise, there, maybe apprehension. Hades rises from his chair to address them. “I do still require consent from our rescuee. Nothing more than a formality,” he says as if to reassure them all.

Alice swears the entire hall holds its collective breath. Oblivious to the change in atmosphere, Quentin says, “Just like that? What kind of deal did you guys make?” He narrows his eyes at Alice, Eliot and Margo.

She’s saved from having to come up with a reply to a question she doesn’t know the answer to by Margo. “Don’t question it,” she says, tapping her wrist. “Chop chop, time to go. Any tearful goodbyes to the white light and your childhood dog better be quick, cause you won’t be back here for a long time.”

The brimming hope inside Alice falters and sinks at Quentin’s prolonged silence. She’s a pessimist, always has been. Charlie used to call her Little Miss Worrywart when they were little for always finding the flip side in every joyful moment, so unlike their parents’ nonchalance and Charlie’s own sunny disposition, but privately, she knows it serves its purpose. It’s a way of preparing for the worst, so that if it comes—when it comes—the hurt will settle in softly, familiar like a worn memory.

But she’s let Quentin’s presence catch her off guard, and his lack of affirmation doesn’t settle so much as barrel into her.

“Stop fucking around, Coldwater.” Margo looks like she’s about to slap him again.

The guilt on Quentin’s face makes Alice feel guilty in turn. He keeps glancing over his shoulder as if he’s expecting someone there, even though there’s nothing behind him but the ivy-covered walls of the hall and a patch of blue sky peeking through the stone. Alice wonders—is it Fillory he’s looking for? A white sandy beach where his father waits for him to return in some colorful hammock? The green lawn of Brakebills during summer, or a cottage with an unfinished mosaic?

“Quentin,” she hears herself say, unsure where she’s going with it.

“I love you guys, I—I do, I just—” He’s not talking to them but to the air behind him, the invisible afterlife he left when Hades snapped his fingers.

“Don’t you fucking dare finish that sentence.” Eliot’s tone is imperious, but Alice easily detects the panic beneath the surface, and she doubts it escapes Quentin.

“It’s not your choice,” Quentin says. “That’s what he’s saying, right?” He glances back at Hades. “It’s mine.” Hades, for his part, is frowning. It pierces through Alice’s despair, her mind torn between figuring out the endgame and wanting to beg Quentin to just say yes already—or. Not. It’s his choice, she reminds herself. It has to be his. “What if I say yes?” Quentin asks.

“Then you return to Earth, along with your friends.”

“Bullshit. That’s not how it works. You told me,” Quentin says to Penny, “you said I had to move on.”

Penny’s confusion doesn’t inspire much confidence in Alice. “You’d be breaking a couple of rules,” he says. “Prime fucking Directive rules, to translate to nerd-speak. But—he can do it, sure.” The frown on his face seems to contradict the certainty in his words.

It feels like a retread of her and Eliot’s earlier argument, only now with the additional serrated edge of heartbreak. It’s not enough, their pleas to Quentin. She can see it in the set of his jaw and the way he keeps glancing back at those square few feet of blue sky with something like longing. It must be nice, she thinks, the afterlife, where the world is never ending and nothing ever breaks your heart.

For Quentin, it must feel like paradise.

“It’s okay,” she says. Her throat feels dry and raw—she has to swallow to get the words out. “It’s okay, Q.” Maybe it’s herself she’s reminding.

“No. Fuck this.” Eliot looks angry, but it’s an anger Alice recognizes as colored by despair. “We don’t get a say in this?”

“You don’t, no.”

“You hypocrite,” Margo says, glaring at Quentin. Her voice is hard with more barely hidden fear. “ _Your choice_ , my ass. Tell me you wouldn’t do the exact same thing.”

Quentin seems surprised at her outburst, and more than a little offended. “That’s—beside the point.” He’s never taken well to being called on his shit. His indignation makes Alice’s heart ache, when it used to be top of the list of things Quentin did that drove her crazy, because apparently that’s what happens when a person dies—their flaws just become one more thing to miss. This is what she’s being asked to let go. It feels a price too steep.

With Quentin standing so close, and with Hades’ power within reach, Alice still isn’t sure whether it’s a price she’s willing to pay. She thought she was, when talking to Julia. That if the moment came and Quentin said no, that she’d be able to let go. Maybe she was deluding herself in thinking that, in order to soothe her conscience. If she were to be asked to turn back now and return to the land of the living without Quentin in tow… She imagines it: continuing her work at the Library and slowly becoming one with the grayscale, or maybe even escaping, focusing on her friendships and yet again overturning her life. But whatever future she envisions, the absence of Quentin in said hypothetical timeline pervades everything. 

This is the lesson she should have learned from resurrecting Charlie but apparently didn’t—that any attempt to rewind time means to risk breaking her own heart a second time. Kady was right. It hurts more than the initial loss did.

They stand clustered together, with Penny and Hades off to the side. Hades’ tropical bird is singing, still perched on top of the gilded throne and cheerily oblivious to the unfolding show. If Alice closes her eyes she can almost hear the rain falling incessantly against the bare stone outside of the hall they’re currently in, so much more suitable to the moment than the sun streaming across her face, which doesn’t even carry the sting of too-bright summer rays that burn skin. The facsimile sun is beautiful and warm and perfect in a way that feels entirely bland to Alice.

It takes real effort not to beg Quentin to follow them home after all, and anyway it seems Eliot has that avenue covered. Alice isn’t sure whether to be grateful he’s voicing the small fissure in her heart that bemoans the unfairness of it all, or to be frustrated that he can lay his heart on the line with no apparent regard for the turmoil of ethics and emotions roiling inside her. “Don’t do this,” he says. “I don’t know what it is you want me to say, but—please.”

Quentin looks off to the side.

“I don’t want to live without you.” Eliot blinks, as if he’s surprised at his own words. Alice used to think he was so hard to read—him and Margo, self-appointed Brakebills royalty, breezing through life when everyone else had to settle for a clumsy stagger—but right now it’s as if every thought, every feeling, is right there on his face in bold lettering. Undone and unspooled. Alice can relate. Maybe that’s Quentin’s real discipline, in the end. It’s only logical that someone with the power to mend would also be able to unravel. “You can’t ask that of me,” Eliot says, “not after everything. I don’t care if that makes me selfish.”

With some measure of surprise, Alice watches Quentin waver at that. She chastises herself for the surprise—surely she knows better now. The hurt settles heavily into her stomach, along with the despair and hopelessness and all the tiresome, painful emotions she can no longer find the energy to suppress. It’s easier, maybe. To focus on what will ultimately be irrelevant if this is where their journey ends.

She returns to the present moment when Quentin cuts through her thoughts by catching her gaze. How quickly she became an outsider to this—not just to the conversation but the moment, like she’s floating above it all, incapable of coming back down. It’s familiar like shrugging on an old coat, to be the girl on the outside looking in. Except Quentin sees her, like he always has, like she once thought he always would. There’s not much she can do to repay that, right now, but she can take his hand. Hold it in hers, and say, “I want you back more than anything, you know that right? You’re the best thing that’s ever happened to me.”

Deep in her soul she knows it to be true. She survived losing Charlie, then losing herself. She’s clawed her way back from death, from devastation, from perdition. Yet never without Quentin by her side, even when she didn’t want him there.

Quentin shakes his head. “I’m not. It’s always been you, Alice. Can’t you see that?”

What he means by that, she doesn’t know. Whether he means love, or something inspirational about being her own savior that he must’ve picked up from a book somewhere. It’s something you say when preparing to leave, she realizes, and tries to tell herself that at least she’ll always have this goodbye to warm herself with whenever the icy blast of loss hits her. She knows Eliot is watching her, and can’t muster the energy to feel anything but bone-deep exhaustion. It’s as if she’s been running for months on end, with not a single second of peace, and in some ways she has.

How do you ask a person to live? To subject themselves to the exhaustion of life on Earth and its endless barrage of misery, when on the other side is—literally—Heaven? How do you ask them to live for you, knowing it might be asking the greatest sacrifice of all?

There’s a difference between giving up and learning to let go, is what Penny said, and Alice thinks she finally understands what he meant by that—what he must have learned through experience. Because the answer to the question is—you can’t.

“It’s okay,” she repeats. Quentin’s hand is sweaty in hers. What a wonderful, mundane, human thing, to sweat. She glances back at Margo, whose face is wet, and Eliot, who looks like he stopped breathing minutes ago and is just waiting for the final blow.

She’s not sure what happens, then, but the air tightens with magic. Not the Magician kind, carefully executed along the proper guidelines, but something more primal and innate. The magic of a god. Quentin is looking behind him again. Alice sees no change to the scenery, only the same empty idyll, but Quentin’s eyes widen in something like recognition.

“What’s happening?” Eliot asks. Margo’s hand lands on his arm, her gaze tracking whatever their human eyes can’t see. She shakes her head.

It’s deadly silent in the hall—even the bird has stopped singing its tune—but there’s a conversation happening here, even though Alice isn’t privy to it. She feels her heart beat its nervous rhythm. The sun’s heat, though technically an ideal temperature, is getting to her. If this is it, she thinks, if they’ll be asked to leave soon, then let it be now. The anticipation is worse than anything—the not knowing, the wondering, all the doubt that has tracked her to this moment. That’s all she wants, now. For this whole thing to end.

Just when the silence becomes so unbearable that she thinks she’ll break, Quentin shifts slightly to turn to Hades. His nod is nearly imperceptible, but Hades casts his eyes down and moves his hand as if to pluck a particle of dust from the air, and then the odd tension bleeds out, like the vacuous air in the wake of a storm. Quentin closes his eyes as if composing himself. “Just promise me none of you made some kind of Persephone deal,” he says, “because I will literally murder you.”

Alice’s heart skips a beat.

“No Persephone deals,” Eliot affirms, then amends, “Mostly because I didn’t realize that was an option.”

Alice isn’t entirely sure whether he’s being serious or whether it’s an attempt to defuse the tension, or even cover his slide into vulnerability. Either way, it doesn’t seem like Quentin appreciates it. “Then—” Quentin glances at Alice, a faint, not entirely happy smile edging its way along his lips. But it’s not a sad smile either, she realizes. “Take me back to Earth, please.”

Alice has fallen prey to hope so often over the past few weeks only for it to be dashed, that for a few moments she can’t entirely believe he’s said it. The happiness remains stuck somewhere in her chest, beating its fluttering wings against the cage of her heart. She’s expecting some flippant comment from Margo, maybe even Eliot, but the relief on their faces is palpable and evidently outstrips any need for words.

She’s not sure what just happened. The only thing she can focus on, it seems, is Quentin’s little half-smile, almost foreign after a long absence. She can’t even smile in return, only lower her eyelids on a shuddery exhale as he brushes a strand of hair behind her ear. “Let’s go home,” she hears Eliot say, and spends no time analyzing the tone of his voice at all.

Alice opens her eyes. The hall seems welcoming again, the bird circling their heads a beautiful, wistful expression of Hades’ love for Persephone. Yes, they’re going home. Warmth streams through her from the point where the skin of her hand brushes Quentin’s.

Hades raises his hand, his fingers poised for a snap. “Wait,” Alice says, meaning to ask for a moment to say her goodbyes to Penny and maybe bully him into keeping in touch.

Then a couple of things happen at the same time.

Hades freezes, hand suspended in the air;

Darkness falls over the sunlit hall, spreading from an invisible source and wilting all of the beautiful flowers;

Penny jumps in front in them;

And from out of thin air, within the split second of a blink, three shadows appear.

Alice recognizes them as the things that thwarted the ritual, even though if asked she wouldn’t be able to come up with a word to describe them. The closest she gets is a roiling mass or maybe a thick black cloud that hovers in front of their eyes. Alice’s vision feels distorted, like peering through a impenetrable fog. She tightens her grip on Quentin’s hand and feels someone else brush her arm on the other side—Eliot, pulling them back towards the doorway.

The Fates, sensing transgressors, must have decided to return. How did she manage to forget about them?

Their shadows aren’t static. They’re moving, and Alice realizes they’re altering, too, bulging and slinking and transforming, slowly but surely, into identifiable shapes. When it’s over, she’s looking at three figures that might pass for human when seen from a great distance. This close, they more closely resemble a child’s crude drawing of a person, or maybe an expressionist painting by Munch or Nolde.

When Alice manages to tear her eyes away, she spies the tropical bird on the withered grass in front of her boots. Deadly still, its feet sticking into the air. Its bottle-green neck has been snapped.

One of the Fates—the one with a cavern that most resembles a mouth—starts speaking. “You were issued a warning. You will not receive another, Hades of the Underworld.” Its voice is high and thin like nails on chalkboard. Alice feels it in her bones and on her skin like a tangible caress, raising the hair along her arms. She shivers.

Hades’ face is a careful construction of pure blankness. “I came to you with a request,” he says, polite with an edge of steel he makes no real effort to hide. “I asked you to return my love to me.”

“And your request was denied.” The words land like the swing of a gavel. Hades stands, proud and unmovable, as the Fates drift forward and speak as one. “Hades Agesilaos. You have lost your wife, and now, for breaking the laws of gods and men, your pride will cost you your crown and your kingdom. Your title will be stripped from you. You will not die, but you will fade into oblivion.” The words ring out into the hall like those of a spell. Alice isn’t sure whether the Fates are speaking English, but as she glances at the pale faces of Quentin, Eliot and Margo, she knows they’ve all understood what sentence is being passed, and that for Hades, it’s a fate far worse than death.

Alice considers running, all the way back through that godawful forest and over the marshy ground, but she doesn’t know whether they could take Quentin along or whether he’d evaporate and be dragged back into the Underworld like Eurydice. Besides, it seems like the epitome of hubris—to think you could outrun Fate.

“Please, let’s not fight,” Hades says, as if all that’s occurred is simply an introduction gone south. “I’m glad you could join us.” He’s smiling like the Fates haven’t just announced the end of his world. Perhaps there comes a point where you’ve lost so much it no longer feels like loss but absolution. All this time, has Hades simply been a man gone mad with grief?

It doesn’t add up, Alice thinks, desperately trying to make sense of it, as if that will save them. Penny seems equally dazed, which is a strange comfort—he must not have been in on this, then. He steps forward. “Let the humans go,” he appeals to the Fates. “They’ve got nothing to do with this.”

“We will deal with you and your friends later.” The Fates’ voices blend together to address Penny, who seems ready to throw himself between the two sides should the need arise. Alice was the one who dragged him into this. What a terrible way to repay him for all the times he’s helped her.

“Fuck,” he swears quietly as Quentin says, “I don’t think they want me to leave.”

That’s when the gravity of the situation really hits Alice. They came here to get Quentin back, but it’s slowly dawning on her that maybe none of them will be leaving today. And for what? Some slapdash suicidal scheme devised by the god of the Underworld, who only enlisted them—foolish, desperate humans—as expendable pawns?

Maybe that’s the true price for attempting to defy the Fates—not just the repeated loss but to sink alongside Quentin. She understands Hades’ fury at having to subject himself to this—to the contract of Destiny that they all unwittingly signed with their names when being born into this life. It’s clear from the Fates’ careless dismissal that none of this is about them anyway. They’re collateral damage in some nebulous game between Hades and the Fates, and now they’re going down that way.

At least she won’t be alone, she thinks, wishing she could press her lips to Quentin’s one last time.

“What the fuck is he doing?” Penny makes no effort to hide his panic, and as Alice watches the light glint off something inside Hades’ suit jacket, it’s as if everything slots into place.

Because in Hades’ hand now rests a dagger, elegant but plain, with an onyx-black curved handle and a razor-sharp blade. It radiates magical energy. Alice can feel its black, mystical tentacles spreading, wrapping itself around the air.

“You know that it’s near impossible to get an audience with the Fates, even for the King of the Underworld?” Hades says, back to his monologuing and rhetorical questions. “Everything always has to happen on your terms, after all. But I just don’t see the point in that anymore.” He’s twirling the knife between his fingers, with the familiarity of Quentin performing one of his coin tricks. “Perhaps it’s time for a change in tenure. I hear democracy works well on Earth? Or maybe we’ll just try a little chaos.”

He is mad, Alice realizes. They’re all going to die here because Hades lost his mind when he couldn’t face the loss of Persephone, and they were dumb enough to follow him down the same path.

“You think you can best us?” The Fates’ voices echo, mocking and remote, not the tiniest hint of worry coloring their words. And why should they be worried, when they’re up against a couple of humans, an immortal Librarian and a god with a glorified knife?

Hades’ grin bares all his teeth, as shiny and sharp as his blade. “The dagger took me a while to find, granted. Luckily, as a grieving widower I needed some time to retire from my duties. And these kind ladies and gentlemen—” he spreads his hand to encompass the rest of them, “were so very helpful, with their love and—truly _relentless_ passion.” He talks as if recounting some epic Shakespearean tragedy. Romeo and Juliet, dying in each other’s arms, a fate that might have been avoided. “I knew you wouldn’t be able to resist stopping them. And here we are.”

The Fates are approaching, drifting towards Hades with no urgency behind their movements. “You are no match for us.”

“Not usually, no. But—this?” He cocks his head back to take in the now gray sky and ruins. “My late wife was always better at binding magic than I was. You’ll find yourselves—slightly inhibited, I’m afraid.”

He shrugs when the Fates halt as if they’ve bumped into an invisible ward a few feet in front of Hades. “Any last words, from anyone?”

“Uh, yeah,” Penny says. “What the fuck?”

Alice feels as if she’s in a train that’s hurtling forward while the engineer gleefully steers them toward a steep cliff. She’s entirely powerless—the worst feeling she can imagine—merely along for the ride. All she can do is tighten her grip on Quentin’s hand and feel him squeeze in return.

“Penny, of course,” Hades says. Their engineer, maddeningly calm. “I have a feeling there will soon be a job opening. Definitely a discussion to be had, there, if you’re looking to move up the ladder.”

And then Alice is forced to watch with wide eyes as a grimacing Hades plunges his dagger into the chest of one of the Fates. Black smoke erupts, the smell of charred flesh making Alice’s eyes water. Piercing cries that echo the hall. Rain starts falling again, seeping into the gap between Alice’s coat and neck and running in an ice cold trickle down her back. Her vision is clouded by the smoke, the rain.

Hades wrenches the dagger free, watching the figure crumple to the ground. The other two Fates are speaking, but their words are garbled by the storm that’s been raised and falter like static, missing a third wire that would complete the connection. Untouched by rain or emotion, he turns back. “Before I forget,” he says. “I should thank you. I couldn’t have done it without you all, truly. Rewards are in order.”

He raises the hand that isn’t currently holding the weapon and presses his thumb and middle finger together. And then he snaps his fingers.

*

On Earth, Alice coughs up ash and dust onto the hardwood floor of Kady’s apartment. Next to her, Eliot crawls towards Margo, who is clutching her own parched throat. There’s the crashing sound of a glass or maybe a plate hitting the floor, and then Julia—breathless, stunned—gasps out an ”Oh my God” and falls to her knees as, on Alice’s other side, Quentin gasps to life.


	12. Miracle Day

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Previous chapter: Quentin makes his choice. Hades moves against the Fates, and rewards our heroes for their assistance.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you got this far—thanks for sticking with this story. I thoroughly enjoyed writing it, and if I managed to entertain even one person with it, I’m counting it as a success.

Eliot has knocked three times already with no response, which is as good an invitation as any, he supposes. When he opens the door, Quentin is—of all things—moving clothes into the hideous driftwood dresser. He looks up at the intrusion, opens his mouth as if to announce something, then seems to think better of it and foregoes words in order to continue organizing.

“I’m getting the sense that you’re mad at me,” Eliot says.

Quentin refolds a pair of his ubiquitous black pants to place them in a drawer next to what looks like Alice’s own collection of black skinny pants, and without shifting his gaze says, “What gave it away?”

It’s been a little over a day since the Underworld spat them out, most of which Eliot has spent sleeping. He’s immeasurably tired, still, in a way that he suspects simple sleep won’t resolve, though not for lack of trying. But it’s different from the exhaustion of the last few weeks. The presence of Quentin, even when there’s a few thin apartment walls separating them, makes any physical condition remarkably easy to bear. And so, Quentin’s baleful silence when their paths have crossed sparks no more than an almost giddy relief that Quentin is here to be angry with Eliot at all.

“That smile on your face is really helping your case,” Quentin says. He closes the drawer with a little more force than necessary. 

Eliot presses his lips together and tries to suppress the smile, unsuccessfully. He hopes the effort counts. “I think you’ll have to get in line.” He inclines his head towards the door, meaning: Margo, Julia, maybe Alice. He isn’t sure whether Alice is angry with him or whether she even has any cause to. She’s been holed up in her room with Quentin which means Eliot hasn’t seen her, only heard her leave with Kady earlier to handle whatever it is Hades has set in motion. It must be serious if it’s the kind of emergency that can wrest Alice from Quentin’s side. Eliot will start caring about all that—the fate of the universe type thing—soon. Soonish.

Quentin has given up on angrily putting away clothes to lean against the dresser. “Fine. I’m listening,” he says, in the tone of voice that indicates he’s not going to listen so much as glare while Eliot speaks, and then resume whatever he was doing in the first place, his mind unchanged. It’s a distinctly strange sensation, to have that knowledge of another person’s habits even though he and Quentin have hardly argued over the course of their friendship. Something like _déjà vu_ —coming across a new path and realizing you’ve walked it before.

Eliot hasn’t looked forward to having this conversation. Not the version of it that he’d imagined while he was in the Monster’s mind, where he’d made a promise to himself to bare his soul and brittle heart, and not the later version, after, which included more soul-bearing along with endless admissions of guilt. It’s only in the last few hours, while he worked up the courage to knock, that he’s dismissed them both in favor of something underprepared and plain. He’s not making a case or a defense and he won’t lie to Quentin, not after everything. Which only leaves the truth, more terrifying and vast than anything.

“I can’t apologize for shooting the Monster in Blackspire,” he says, and watches Quentin’s expression tighten. “I spent—a lot more time in my own mind than I’m honestly comfortable with, and I realize everything that happened after is my fault. But leaving you in Blackspire wasn’t an option.”

Quentin brushes his hair back. It’s too short to fit behind his ear, but the movement must be ingrained by now, a way to defuse his frustration, transform it into something tangible. “That wasn’t for you to decide. Why couldn’t you just trust me? Or—talk to me, at least?”

“You wouldn’t have listened.”

“So you didn’t give me the chance? You and Margo went behind my back instead? Do you have any idea what the Monster did, while you were in there? What _I_ did, to—fucking _appease_ it?”

Eliot only has the vaguest notion, though Quentin’s anger speaks volumes. He realizes he lucked out in that sense by not retaining the memories. All he had to combat were his own demons, which was, granted, fairly terrifying, but most likely preferable over living out the rest of his days with the image of his bloodied hands ripping out gods’ organs. He’s been able to construct a semi-complete picture from Margo’s carefully redacted recap and the way people startled whenever he entered a room too quietly or ventured a little too close. But no specifics. It’s all soft edges, with a more terrifying reality hidden behind a curtain he hasn’t dared to pull back. He doesn’t know whether he’s ready for Quentin to, even while knowing he’d have to grit his teeth and bear it. “Then why didn’t you just get rid of the Monster?” he asks.

“You know why.” Quentin sounds reproachful, like somehow that too is Eliot’s fault.

“I’m sure that was a unanimous decision.” The slant of Quentin’s eyes tells Eliot it wasn’t, which is—fair. He’d also have selected exterminating the overpowered Big Bad over saving himself. Evidently they hadn’t put it down to a vote, or Eliot wouldn't be standing here. “You should have,” he says, then clarifies, “Killed the Monster, I mean.”

Still on the defense, Quentin says, “You don’t get to blame me for that. I did it to save you. And anyway.” He looks away, to the pictures on Alice’s dresser, like he can’t say this and meet Eliot’s eye at the same time. “It was worth it.”

It terrifies Eliot how easily that admission comes to Quentin. How ready he is—has always been—to sacrifice himself for some bigger purpose. Eliot had been able to push it aside while they were working on a way to get him back, but the memory of Quentin in Hades’ hall, wavering between Earth and staying in the Underworld, is like a vice around his heart. On its heels comes the echo of Alice’s words— _what if he doesn’t want to come back?_ One more thing Eliot was absent for. The line between suicide and heroic sacrifice has always seemed like a particularly blurry one, but Eliot wonders if for Quentin there’s a line at all.

“No it wasn’t,” Eliot says. It comes out sounding less like the assertion he meant for it to be and more like a plea. 

“It was. For me,” Quentin says. “To have you back.” He states it plainly, with some lingering traces of anger, like this is nothing but the continuation of an argument that Eliot is losing.

If there’s anything worse than Quentin’s exaltation of the bigger purpose, it’s Quentin admitting to any heroic sacrifice on Eliot’s behalf. He understands, all of a sudden, Alice’s sharp iciness after Quentin had brought her back. Quentin has his arms crossed like Eliot is supposed to fall to his knees and thank him, and Eliot wants to throttle him a little, in that gentle, life-affirming way. It’s nice, at least, to know that death hasn’t washed away the full range of emotions Eliot can feel towards him.

“I’m still pissed at you, for the record,” Quentin says. It’s clearly meant to be a concession with the way his shoulders slope downward, the fight having bled out of him. He moves over to the bed and sits down, shoving a messy pile of clothes aside, and when Eliot takes the risk to sit down next to him, a respectable distance away, Quentin wordlessly lists into him. It’s a little awkward, to lean together like this. Eliot’s back is less patient and desperate than his heart and protests at the pose, but he can’t bring himself to move.

“Fuck, I missed you.” Quentin’s words are muffled by Eliot’s shirt, and Eliot has to press his face into the crown of Quentin’s head to keep from spilling every messy, snarled thought inside him. Not now, at least. Once upon a time Eliot was good at reading a room, knowing when a dwindling party needed reviving versus when it was simply the slow ebb of the guests winding down, and this moment doesn’t seem to call for words. Besides, if there’s one thing they have now, it’s time. All Eliot has to do is try to hold the shards of his heart together.

“In the Underworld,” Quentin says, after some time has passed and they’ve laid down to enjoy the rare winter’s sun’s slow descent reflected in the windows of the high-rise across from the apartment. Eliot hums when he doesn’t immediately continue. “I was with my dad, at first. And then—I had to look, cause there’s, like, different sections. I don’t know how much of this I’m allowed to tell you.” Eliot wonders if Underworld policy means the recently deceased have to sign an NDA. “But. I saw Arielle. And—Teddy. He got so old.” Quentin is smiling to himself, lost in the memory. “I guess—I don’t know. I just wanted to know that it was real.”

Was that what he left behind when he agreed to return to Earth—the invisible ghosts Hades let him say goodbye to? Eliot tries to imagine what Quentin’s version of heaven must have looked like and finds that he can’t, nor can he bring himself to ask for more from Quentin. The words simply remain stuck like a glitching screen—he’s had too much practice at never saying what he means. Instead he keeps his eyes fixed on the ceiling as he feels the mattress dip, Quentin shifting and rolling over to his side. So many months he’s been desperate to talk to Quentin, and now that he’s here, inches away, Eliot is speechless.

Or nearly, anyway. He forces himself to turn his head on the pillow, finding Quentin already staring at him, and tries not to think too much as he says, “You know I’m in love with you, right?” It’s somehow both easier than he expected and the hardest thing he’s ever done.

Quentin’s expression barely shifts. It only freezes a little, as if trapped by Eliot’s gaze. “I know,” he says.

That’s that, then. Neither of them seems inclined to resume the conversation, but Quentin also doesn’t show any intention of leaving or kicking Eliot out. Which is fine, seeing as Eliot’s suddenly found himself with a brand new well of patience gained from a few terrified weeks of not having Quentin in his life at all.

The sun has disappeared behind ominous gray clouds and Eliot is dozing off, lulled by the sounds of the city outside, when Quentin shifts again. He’s clearly going for casual but trying too hard at it—as if there is such a thing as casual with them anymore. Eliot aches, suddenly, for how simple things used to be, though maybe that’s the old lie of nostalgia again. When Quentin stills again, his head is on Eliot’s chest. He hasn’t spoken a word. With his very own endeavor at nonchalance, Eliot lifts his hand and cards his fingers through Quentin’s hair, which fans across Eliot’s shirt. From this vantage point, if Eliot lifts his head just the tiniest bit, he can see Quentin’s eyes are open wide.

Eliot has spent endless evenings with Margo’s head in his lap, or his head in Margo’s, or any other variation where they ended up tangled together on some couch or bed. For the vast majority of those, they were even clothed. This is—not quite like that, Eliot assesses. Close enough, maybe. It’s an easy line to sell to himself in order to keep the proximity. Just one minute longer, and he’ll let go. One minute—and one more.

They must fall asleep like that, because the next thing Eliot knows someone is knocking at the door, Margo’s voice blaring through and growing louder when she enters without waiting for a response. She pauses in the doorway, lifts her eyebrows to shoot Eliot a capital Look and then makes a show of closing the door behind her. It’s more than he’s gotten from her since their argument in the elevator, and Eliot’s filled with warmth for her.

“You didn’t get enough sleep in Shangri-la to last a lifetime?” she asks as Quentin stirs and blinks against the sharp evening sun. Margo herself looks wide awake, her hair and make-up impeccable as if she’s getting ready for a night out on the town. “Dinner’s ready. Julia cooked. And then Penny went and got takeout, so you’ve got no excuse to feign sleep.”

Quentin snorts and swings his legs onto the floor. He doesn’t seem flustered at all, even though when he tries to pass Margo to get to the door she again puts on the sly smile she directed at Eliot earlier and reaches out to straighten the collar of his shirt.

“You know Alice is a better Magician than you, right?” she says, after Quentin has left.

Eliot gets up, moving over to Alice’s tiny table mirror to fix his hair seeing as she’d thrown out the room’s floor mirror when she moved in. “I have other qualities.”

“Yeah, not what I meant.”

She sits down on the bed and watches him mess with his hair, her sharp-toed shoes tapping onto the floor. To an outsider she might look entirely casual, leaning back on her hands in her sapphire dress that shows off her toned legs, but she strikes Eliot more as some kind of bird of prey—elegant and poised, and willing to wait to trap her victim in her shiny black nails. “So,” he says, catching her gaze in the mirror. “I’m doing a whole apology tour here. Do you want to hear the pitch?”

Her eyes widen like he’s caught her off guard. Her acting talents were wasted on Brakebills, truly. “Well I for one can’t wait. Too bad you can’t charm your way into my pants.”

That joke is going to get old fast, he guesses.

It’s been nothing but exhausting life lessons ever since they crashed into Fillory, but if the past few days have taught him anything, it’s that he’s well and truly useless without Margo. His love for her is like a primary need, up there with breathing and eating. He’d starve without her—literally, probably, but also figuratively. He’s always known that, deep down, but like most lessons it’s apparently one that requires more than one revision.

He decides his hair is a lost cause and joins her on the bed instead. “I’m sorry,” he says.

“Illustrious start.”

“No interrupting the speech, please.” Eliot risks a smile, and watches as Margo’s eyes soften the slightest bit. “I’ve been awful to you. There’s no excuse for it, except that you know me well enough by now that—well, you know who I am. Better than anyone else, probably, including myself. And I know how much Fillory means to you.” Her eyes shift to the side. “Sorry my priorities got fucked up. Whatever you think it takes to save that shithole, we’ll do it.” She lets him take her hand even as her gaze remains fixed on something past his right shoulder. “As for our argument… It was—the cruelest thing I could have said, and also the most untrue.”

“Was it?” She’s lined her eyes with black and together with the wet sheen of unshed tears her eyes look impossibly big. “I don’t know who I am without Fillory, El.”

“Neither do I,” he says. He’s barely had time to think about it since he lost his crown, but with Fillory currently off limits, here on Earth he’s effectively unemployed, without anything resembling a useful degree beyond high school and multiple years of unexplained idleness on his resume. He’s fucked, essentially. It feels like such a mundane concern to have after everything, and maybe it won’t even matter if the world is about to end, but Eliot might actually be forced to think about his future.

He wipes at the single tear that rolls down Margo’s cheek. Her laughter is laced with the tears she’s holding back, but her expression is no longer the closed-off fortress it was. “We’ll have to get jobs,” she says, making it sound like they’re about to be carted off to the Gulag. “Jesus, imagine that. This High King is not cut out for a nine-to-five.”

“I’m sure there’s a noble quest we can sign up for.”

Her eyes widen in horror. “Don’t even speak that word.” She laughs again, sniffing and carefully running her pinkies beneath her eyes to catch stray tears. “You know this whole business is ruining my reputation as a cold-hearted bitch.”

He wants to argue with her that she’s never been cold-hearted, but he recognizes her attempt to make light of things. Then her smile fades, and she rests her head on Eliot’s shoulder, shifting closer and nestling her body into his side. Her shoulders lift a little, the sharp bones digging into his side when she snakes an arm around him to pull him closer. “Don’t quote me on this, but I might also have said some things that weren’t entirely—true.”

“Debatable.”

“Not really. Well, you are a dick. But not the other stuff. You’re the only person I can stand, remember?”

A grin unfurls on his face at her callback, so obviously a lie. He’s never met a person so intent on proving their independence while caring so damn much about others. Sometimes he thinks that’s Margo’s biggest secret—not that there’s a softer core hidden beneath layers and layers of armor, but that the layers aren’t all that difficult to peel back after all. It’s easy to see past her walls, once you know what you’re looking for, because what she truly wants is for someone to invest enough effort to try. There’s not much in Eliot’s life he’s proud of, but getting to witness not only Margo’s glory, but her vulnerable, pliable and tear-stained center as well, easily makes the top of the list.

“I know no greater honor than that,” he says, tilting her face up at him. “We don’t need Fillory.” He’s surprised to find he means it. He still cares about the country and its people, about Fen and even Josh, if he turns out to be the kind of man Margo is willing to walk through fire for, but his love for Fillory feels more distant with each passing day. It will always be his past, the one thing that could have saved him from drowning, but he’s starting to realize it might not be his future. “We were royalty long before those crowns confirmed it. So—we’ll figure it out. You and me.”

Margo is smiling again, soft and sweet, the smile he’s only ever seen her use in private and then only directed at him. “I’d miss the crown, though. Jewel tones suit me.” She lowers her head to his shoulder again and stares at the door. “You and me, huh? You know, _if_ we manage to figure out this Fillory time-fuckery and Alice doesn’t hex you—we’re gonna have to introduce an amendment to that.” Her voice lifts a bit at the end, as if she isn’t quite sure how she feels about the prospect. “And I’m terrible at sharing.”

He hums. “I know.”

He probably deserves the sharp dig of her elbow. “You’re not supposed to agree, asshole,” she says, but he can tell that she’s smiling. It’s followed by a soft and wistful sigh. “I missed you, El.”

He’s pretty sure she’s not just talking about the time he spent as the Monster’s pet prisoner. _Me too_ , he wants to say, and instead settles for, “I’m sorry,” because once more can’t hurt, not if he means it. Of all the things he feels guilty for—an entire blackboard full of regrets—the recent addition of Margo’s wounded expression in the Underworld elevator is the one that guts him most. In hindsight he feels a blank, taut kind of terror at the thought that he might have lost her too.

Twirling one of her artful curls around his finger, he says, “This is the moment where you say, ‘oh no, it’s fine, don’t worry about it’.”

She tilts her head into Eliot’s hand like a cat angling for attention. “Why would I say that? You better apologize, bitch.” Lazily, she lifts her hand to slap his chest before settling again, quietly content, against him.

*

When they join the others in the living room eventually, the food has already gone lukewarm. It still tastes delicious, though. With everyone present in the apartment the kitchen counter turns out to be too small, so they’ve all migrated towards the couch instead, despite the massive oak table a few feet away. Eliot suspects none of them feel adult enough to hold an impromptu dinner party at an oak table. It’s surprisingly domestic, almost like the private dinners he and Margo used to throw at the Cottage except with better food—phad thai kung and kaeng kanun that tastes like it actually hails from Thailand, most likely courtesy of Twenty-Three who seems to be in an uncharacteristically good mood and buoyantly carries the conversation by ragging on Kady’s music tastes. His feet are on Julia’s lap, his arm slung along the back of the couch behind Kady, who for the most part looks relaxed.

“No, no fucking way,” Penny says, heaving himself up off the couch. “This doesn’t deserve the title of rock music. It’s rock music the way Nickelback is rock.”

“Oh my God, no, please,” Julia begs, “don’t let him play dubstep. Spare us!” She pulls his arm so he lands sprawled across Julia and Kady. Alice and Quentin, occupying the other arm of the couch, have to dodge a flailing arm. They’re all flushed and cheerful with the air of people who started drinking a while ago and have been making a steady progression towards wasted. Clearly Eliot and Margo have some catching up to do.

“I don’t listen to dubstep,” Penny mutters, though no one seems to be listening anymore.

The only one who seems impervious to the unusual cheer is Alice. She sits curled up beneath Quentin’s arm, still dressed in her Library power suit, but her attention keeps drifting to her phone as she explains Quentin’s legal status to him. “So, you did kind of officially die,” she says, “but I think considering recent circumstances we can just slip you under the radar.” Only Alice would want to talk business at a party, Eliot thinks, then feels somewhat guilty for it.

“Oh wait,” Julia says, still giggling and nudging Quentin’s arm. “Did Alice tell you, you might find some of your stuff missing. We sorta burned it.” She presses her lips together, a snort escaping her. “That’s not funny at all, I’m sorry.”

Quentin pretends to be unimpressed, though he too can’t quite suppress his grin. “Yeah, I caught that part, actually.”

“Hey, that was heartwarming, all right.” Kady leans over. “Did you also see us sing a-ha? Cause that part was my idea.”

“I don’t even like a-ha.”

“Everyone likes a-ha, Q,” Eliot says, and enjoys the warmth of Quentin’s fond eye-roll.

It shouldn’t be this easy. Eliot has spent weeks in this apartment with snow and rain beating against the windows and the inside feeling not much more welcoming. They’d been ghosts, all of them, haunting their own corners and only crossing paths occasionally to exchange a perfunctory greeting. Maybe eventually they would’ve found their way back here, with or without Quentin, or maybe Penny and Julia would have gotten tired of having to share their affection with onlookers and moved into a faculty room at Brakebills, while Eliot and Margo retook Whitespire, and they would’ve celebrated a final New Year’s Eve together exchanging stories of their vastly different lives.

It shouldn’t be this simple—Quentin’s return the only thing it takes to snap everything back into place—but maybe it is.

Alice’s attention has already waned again. If Eliot leans forward out of his chair, he can see her switch between a news app and a message thread. “How fucked are we?” he asks, ignoring the ongoing argument on whether 80s synth-pop constitutes proper funeral music.

Alice looks up like she’s been caught and angles her screen away from him. “It’s fine,” she says. She sounds harried, or maybe just annoyed. Quentin is ostensibly laughing at Julia’s derisive speech on Taylor Swift’s discography, but there’s no doubt in Eliot’s mind that he’s listening in on every word they’re saying. Evidently Alice realizes the same thing, because she gets up, shaking off Quentin’s arm in the process, and disappears upstairs with her phone against her ear.

Quentin shoots Eliot a look he can’t decipher, and then goes off in search of Alice.

“It’s not fine, is it?” Julia asks, suddenly sober.

Kady shrugs. “Scale of one to ten? I’d say about a twelve.”

“So only one step above our usual fucked?” Margo downs her scotch like it’s water, then tops up both her own glass and Eliot’s. “Cheers.” They’re no longer drinking to join the fun, he guesses.

“I don’t know,” Kady says, glancing up at the balcony where Alice and Quentin have disappeared out of sight. “Alice and I were gonna have a whole apartment meeting tomorrow but—basically, killing the Fates means there’s no one to keep an eye on things. They were the ones who kept the world in balance, so to speak. Without them, it’s fucking chaos.”

“They’re calling it Miracle Day,” Penny says, then, “What? I’ve been googling,” at Kady’s raised eyebrow. “First people came back to life, now no one’s dying. Sounds great in theory, except—”

“Resources,” Kady finishes. “There wasn’t enough food to feed people before, let alone now. Then—financial crisis, housing problems, global warming, unemployment, pandemics…” She trails off. “That’s not even getting into what all this means for the magical world.”

It’s as if someone has flicked a switch. The mood has shifted and dropped a few degrees below comfortable as they all stare out in front of them, trying not to picture the image Kady has called to mind, which sounds suspiciously like a TV dystopia. “Well shit,” Margo says, dropping her head against the chair and tossing back another glass.

“Yeah,” Kady says, more a sigh than a word.

Eliot still remembers one of his first classes with Fogg, where a girl burned off all of her shiny ginger curls after trying to undo the spell that had singed her textbook. Henry grabbed the opportunity for a lecture, pacing in front of the poor girl’s desk and raising his voice over her helpless sobs.

Magic, he expounded to an audience of rapt, intimidated grad students, was no more a cure-all to life’s problems than a band-aid was to a gaping knife wound. It was a slippery slope to attempt to fix a problem created by magic _with_ magic and expect none of the same consequences, and only a trained Magician, according to Henry—and surely not the dimwitted young students in front of him—would understand that lesson.

The girl hadn’t understood it and was forced to walk around with soft red fur covering her head for most of the year. Eliot wonders if he’ll learn it this time—if ever. How many times can they break something before it becomes permanent? How many life-threatening battles, how many deaths, how many apocalypses can they dodge and rewind, before one time, they’ll have to admit defeat?

“Hades would’ve found a way to do it anyway,” Eliot says, and tries to believe it.

Julia doesn’t even seem angry. A part of Eliot expected a speech, but she’s only been welcoming to Quentin, as if all this time she believed they’d succeed. “I guess we’ll never know,” she says, in the tone of voice that tells Eliot she’ll make a great teacher one day, pacing the desks of students who might never learn the lessons she’s trying to instill in them.

She retreats back to her own room, then, followed by Penny. Kady performs a half-assed spell so half of the empty takeout boxes end up in the trash and the other half on the kitchen counter, while the glasses remain on the table. “Party’s over, then,” Margo says, as she pours herself and Eliot a few more inches of scotch and knocks their tumblers together, watching everyone file out.

*

Margo is the last to retire, but eventually her eyelids start drooping and she admits defeat. “Don’t stay up too late,” she says, pressing her lips against Eliot’s cheek and probably marking him with red streaks, and then leaves him alone in the silent living room. Eliot tells himself he stays because he won’t be able to sleep anyway, and not because Alice and Quentin still haven’t come downstairs. There are bedrooms on the mezzanine as well, more bedrooms than they need with people pairing off, but theirs is on the lower level behind the stairs. They’d have to pass by the couch.

Once upon a time Eliot fantasized about living in a New York apartment exactly like this one, as an Indiana theater kid with big dreams and not nearly enough reality checks under his belt. But since then he’s lived at a College dorm that was bigger on the inside, and then in an honest-to-God castle, and his assessment of the apartment is that there’s just too much _room_ here. Too many empty spaces that aren’t being filled with people and laughter but simply waste away and collect dust. Maybe he should room with Margo instead. Just like old times—ending up in each other’s beds at Brakebills whenever they couldn’t find a pretty stranger to share with. Surely it would be better than living with six other people in the City That Never Sleeps and still being hit by loneliness at night.

Quentin and Alice do come down eventually. They seem surprised to find everyone gone to bed already, the lights turned down low and a rudimentary effort having been made at cleaning up the leftover mess. Alice’s shoulders have lost most of their tension and she even manages a tired smile at Eliot as they bid him goodnight, disappearing into their bedroom and leaving Eliot on his own again.

He swears he used to have more dignity than this. All that character development is starting to feel like a downslide.

He allows himself a few more moments to wallow in self-pity accompanied by a nightcap, but just as he’s ready to attempt sleep, Alice reappears in the living room. She’s changed into pajamas, pink plaid shorts and a shirt with a cartoon bunny on it. All of it is so unlike Alice that for a second Eliot thinks he must have fallen asleep after all. She closes the door to her room carefully, walks over to the kitchen to pour herself a glass of tap water, then dawdles in front of the couch like she can’t decide whether to pretend she came just for the water or not.

“Do you want to sit down?” Eliot asks eventually, when he starts to feel bad for the both of them.

She heaves a small sigh. Picks the other arm of the couch and lifts her knees to her chest, wrapping her arms around them. Her face is bare without her glasses, so much younger than she usually looks when dressed in her Librarian suit. Even at Brakebills, Eliot realizes, he never saw her not dressed to the nines—her signature immaculate Mary Janes included.

Alice’s glass of water sits forgotten on the coffee table as she purses her lips, biting the insides of her cheeks like whatever she’s about to say requires extensive preparation. Then she looks up at Eliot, her eyes a softer, more tranquil blue without the glasses. “I wanted to say thank you.” It’s about the last thing Eliot was expecting from her. “I felt like I was losing my mind sometimes, but—it helped. Not being alone.”

She stares at him, a little defensively as if she’s daring him to contradict her. Eliot wants to make a joke about mostly remembering a lot of arguing, which would be true anyway. But the nervous tapping of Alice’s fingers against her knees thaws him—she deserves better than that. “Me too,” he says.

That gets him a tightly controlled nod and then more silence, like she hasn’t thought this far ahead but can’t bring herself to leave. He surveys her nervy energy, compares it to her almost brash confidence when researching the exact elements needed to resurrect a person, or defending her at times ridiculous beliefs. “You’re better than all of us combined, you know that?” he says.

She frowns and shies away a little, like she expects him to make fun of her with the next part of that sentence. “Okay?”

“It was all you. The whole thing. I wouldn’t even have made it past the dragon.”

Alice laughs a little, like he’s unwittingly shared a joke. “Oh, I think you would’ve found a way.”

They fall silent again. Very promising, how they can’t even carry a conversation beyond brief snippets—intermittent scenes from a long-running soap opera. There were times they managed it, he remembers. While researching, after their visit with Pete, or even in the Underworld. He’d cautiously started calling her a friend in his mind. Not like Margo, that sparking connection he’d been missing all his life until she waltzed past him during their entrance exam in a hot pink dress, like she’d just stumbled across this place on her way home from a club, which maybe she had. Perhaps it can’t always be like that—relationships take work, apparently. And they’d been working, he and Alice, when Quentin was someone who drew them together rather than pulled them apart. Now, he doesn’t know what they are.

As if picking up the thread of Eliot’s train of thought, Alice says, “I haven’t told him you told me about the whole Fillory timeline.” She’s lowered her voice just a bit and seems to regret picking a spot on the couch so far away. “I think—I’m waiting for him to tell me. Which is stupid.”

She could be waiting for a long time, Eliot thinks, but most likely she knows that as well. He isn’t sure why she’s telling him this, except—who else would she tell, maybe. “He loves you,” he says, like it’s that simple.

Alice smiles wryly, like she realizes it isn’t. “I know.” She exhales a breath that sounds almost too loud in the suspended silence, and then, squaring her shoulders like this was what she came for all along, says, “I'm not just going to—to back off, if that's what you think.”

She needs to work on her lead-ups, Eliot thinks as he blinks at her in disbelief. He’s noticed she has this habit of throwing whatever is on her mind out there, uncensored and bare, and then sitting back with a vigilant stare as if saying, ‘there, now you.’ “Alice Quinn,” he drawls, suddenly extraordinarily fond of the proud tilt of her chin and her arched brows. “Are you challenging me to fight over your boyfriend?”

She’s got a good eye-roll game going, succinct and dignified and lofty all in a single expression. “I mean it, Eliot. I know how this ends. Been there, done that. You think I’ll let you screw me over again?” That one stings. She winces a little as if she regrets her choice of words, but doesn’t apologize.

He wants to say he’s a reformed, more evolved man now, but honestly he’s not entirely convinced of that himself, so he figures he’s better off not making any promises he can’t be sure to keep. “Okay,” he says, a little taken aback. They needed to have this conversation at 1 am? “Well, at least there’s a simple solution to this. We can share.”

Alice’s eyes narrow as she tries to determine whether he’s joking, when Eliot isn’t entirely sure himself. She shakes her head, then, a smile peeking past her frown, so blatantly that he doesn’t believe she’s really trying to hide it. “We absolutely can’t. I don’t even like you.”

“You’re a terrible liar, honey.”

Now laughing freely, she tucks her hair behind her ear and leans back against the pillows, her bare legs stretching out along the couch. Her toenails, Eliot notes, are painted a pale blue. He’s learning all kinds of new things about her, it seems.

No matter what happens, he wants to be her friend. As soon as the thought crosses his mind he knows it to be true. He doesn’t have many friends and evidently has trouble keeping them, but perhaps the whole evolving into a more mature, intricate person party line requires more than just a few apologies, and if it took all that heartbreak and a trip to the Underworld to get that, then at least there’s proof that silver linings exist.

Because even after everything, he can’t help but think fate remains a bullshit concept, engineered by creatures just as stupidly mortal as any human. It wasn’t fate that made him shoot a monster in a dark castle, that burned Alice from the inside so they could defeat some bad guy, that killed Quentin. Destiny isn’t what brought them here—past dragons and kings and Fate itself to end up on a couch in New York, a little haven of cautious happiness in a world that’s devolving into chaos, all because a god and a couple of humans were unwilling to abide by universal rules.

Perhaps Jane was right all along. Cross out Fate and Destiny and anything else that requires capitalization—it was them, making choices the only way they know how, by stumbling forward and occasionally managing to do the right thing. Whether this was one of those times remains to be seen, but dystopian future aside, there is, Eliot thinks, something to be said for free will.

“We did it,” he says, because the wave of awe is one he wants to share.

“Yeah,” Alice replies, her tentative smile reflecting the one on Eliot’s face. “We did it.”

**Author's Note:**

> Find me on [Tumblr](https://queennsansa.tumblr.com/).


End file.
